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Fashions in Literature 



FASHIONS IN 
LITERATURE 

And Other Literary and 
Social Essays ^ Addresses 



By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 



INTRODUCTION BY 

Hainilton IVright Mahie 




NEW YORK . DODD, MEAD 
^ COMPANY . M D C C C C I I 



3 



Copyright, 1881, 
By Charles Dudley Warner 

Copyright, 1887 and i88g, 
By The Critic Company 

Copyright, IQOI, 
By The Century Company 

Copyright, igo2. 
By Dodd, Mead & Company 



Published April, 1902 



1 



THE UIBBARY 
(KiNQRESS, 
Two Oowea Receive* 

APR. 2e 1902 
a I I 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON ♦ CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



Table of Contents 

Page 
Fashions in Literature i 

" The Centur)' Magazine," April, 1901, 

The American Newspaper 31 

American Social Science Association, Saratoga, September 
6, 1881. 

Certain Diversities of American Life .... ']'] 

University of the South, July 30, 1889. 

The Pilgrim, and the American of To-day . . 115 

New England Society Dinner, Indianapolis, December 21, 
1892. 

Nathan Hale 139 

Connecticut Capitol, Hartford, June 17, 1887. 

Some Causes of the Prevailing Discontent . . 157 

Hamilton College, June 30, 

Education of the Negro 193 

Presidential Address delivered before the American Social 
Science Association, Washington, May 7, 1900. 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

The Indeterminate Sentence 225 

1899. 

The Life-Saving and Life- Prolonging Art . . 253 

Centennial Celebration, Hartford County Medical Associa- 
tion, September 26, 1892. 

Literary Copyright 267 

Presidential Address, National Institute of Arts and Letters, 
January 30, 1900. 

The Pursuit of Happiness 291 

"The Century Magazine," December, 1900. 

Truthfulness 303 

Literature and the Stage 315 

"The Critic," December 7, 1889. 

** H. H.'* in Southern California 321 

"The Critic," May 14, 1887. 



[-1 



Introduction 



THIRTY years ago and more those 
who read and valued good books 
in this country made the acquain- 
tance of Mr. Warner, and since the publica- 
tion of " My Summer In a Garden " no work 
of his has needed any other introduction 
than the presence of his name on the title- 
page ; and now that reputation has mellowed 
into memory, even the word of interpreta- 
tion seems superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote 
out of a clear, as well as a full mind, and 
lucidity of style was part of that harmonious 
charm of sincerity and urbanity which made 
him one of the most intelligible and com- 
panionable of our writers. 

It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, 
not long ago, we saw him move and heard 
him speak in the ripeness of years which 
brought him the full flavour of maturity with- 
out any loss of freshness from his humour 

or serenity from his thought. He shared 

[vii] 



I NT R ODUCTION 

with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtis a har- 
mony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and 
achievement, which make him a welcome 
figure, not only for what he said, but for what 
he was ; one of those friends whose coming 
is hailed with joy because they seem always 
at their best, and minister to rather than 
draw upon our own capital of moral vitality. 
Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic 
of idealists, the most winning of teachers. 
He had always something to say to the ethi- 
cal sense, a word for the conscience ; but his 
approach was always through the mind, and 
his enforcement of the moral lesson was by 
suggestion rather than by commandment. 
There was nothing ascetic about him, no 
easy solution of the difHculties of life by ig- 
noring or evading them ; nor, on the other 
hand, was there any confusion of moral 
standards as the result of a confusion of 
ideas touching the nature and functions of 
art. He saw clearly, he felt deeply, and he 
thought straight ; hence the rectitude of his 
mind, the sanity of his spirit, the justice of 
his dealings with the things which make for 

[ viii ] 



INTRODUCTION 

life and art. He used the essay as Addison 
used it, not for sermonic effect, but as a form 
of art which permitted a man to deal with seri- 
ous things in a spirit of gayety, and with that 
lightness of touch which conveys influence 
without employing force. He was as deeply 
enamoured as George William Curtis with 
the highest ideals of life for America, and, 
like Curtis, his expression caught the grace 
and distinction of those ideals. 

It is a pleasure to hear his voice once 
more, because its very accents suggest the 
most interesting, high-minded, and captivat- 
ing ideals of living; he brings with him that 
air of fine breeding which Is diffused by the 
men who, in mind as in manners, have been, 
in a distinctive sense, gentlemen ; who have 
lived so constantly and habitually on intimate 
terms with the highest things in thought and 
character that the tone of this really best 
society has become theirs. Among men of 
talent there are plebeians as well as patri- 
cians ; even genius, which is never vulgar, is 
sometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of 
the aims and ideas which it clothes with 

[ix] 



I N T R ODUCTION 

beauty without concealing their essential 
nature. Mr. Warner was a patrician; the 
most democratic of men, he was one of 
the most fastidious in his intellectual com- 
panionships and affiliations. 

The subjects about which he speaks with 
his old-time directness and charm in this 
volume make us aware of the serious temper 
of his mind, of his deep interest in the life of 
his time and people, and of the easy and 
natural grace with which he insisted on fac- 
ing the fact and bringing it to the test of 
the highest standards. In his discussion of 
" Fashions in Literature " he deftly brings 
before us the significance of literature and 
the signs which it always wears, while he 
seems bent upon considering some interest- 
ing aspects of contemporary writing. 

And how admirably he has described his 
own work in his definition of qualities which 
are common to all literature of a high order : 
simplicity, knowledge of human nature, agree- 
able personality. It would be impossible in 
briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum 
up and express the secret of his influence and 

[X] 



INTRODUCTION 

of the pleasure he gives us. It is to sug- 
gest this application of his words to himself 
that this preparatory comment is written. 

When " l\Iy Summer In a Garden" ap- 
peared, it won a host of friends who did not 
stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent 
journalism or a bit of real literature. It was 
so natural, so informal, so intimate that 
readers accepted it as matter of course, as 
they accepted the blooming of flowers and the 
flitting of birds. It was simply a report of 
certain things which had happened out of 
doors, made by an observing neighbour whose 
talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused 
fragrance and light and life of the old-fash- 
ioned garden. This easy approach, along 
natural lines of interest, by quietly putting 
himself on common ground with his reader, 
Mr. Warner never abandoned ; he was so 
delightful a companion that until he ceased 
to walk beside them, many of his friends of 
the mind did not realise how much he had 
enriched them by the way. This charming 
simplicity, which made it possible for him 

to put himself on intimate terms with his 

[xi] 



I N T R O DU C r I O N 

readers, was the result of his sincerity, his 
clearness of thought, and his ripe culture : 
that knowledge of the best which rids a man 
forever of faith in devices, dexterities, ob- 
scurities, and all other substitutes for the 
lucid realities of thinking and of character. 

To his love of reality and his sincere in- 
terest in men, Mr. Warner added natural 
shrewdness and long observation of the psy- 
chology of men and women under the stress 
and strain of experience. His knowledge 
of human nature did not lessen his geniality, 
but it kept the edge of his mind keen, and 
gave his work the variety not only of humour 
but of satire. He cared deeply for people, 
but they did not impose on him ; he loved 
his country with a passion which was the 
more genuine because it was exacting and, 
at times, sharply critical. There runs through 
all his work, as a critic of manners and men, 
as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of 
wide and keen observation; put not into 
the form of aphorisms, but of shrewd com- 
ment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimina- 
tion between the manifold shadings of insin- 

[xii] 



I N T R ODUCTION 

cerity, of insight into the action and reaction 
of conditions, surroundings, social and ethical 
aims on men and women. The stories 
written in his later years are full of the evi- 
dences of a knowledge of human nature which 
was singularly trustworthy and penetrating. 

When all has been said, however, it re- 
mains true of him, as of so many of the 
writers whom we read and love and love as 
we read, that the secret of his charm lay in 
an agreeable personality. At the end of the 
analysis, if the work is worth while, there is 
always a man, and the man is the explanation 
of the work. This is preeminently true of 
those writers whose charm lies less in dis- 
tinctively intellectual qualities than in tem- 
perament, atmosphere, humour, — writers of 
the quality of Steele, Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving. 
It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recall 
Mr. Warner ; it is a necessity if one would 
discover the secret of his charm, the source 
of his authority. 

He was a New Englander by birth and 
by long residence, but he was also a man of 
the world in the true sense of the phrase ; 

[ xiii ] 



INTRODUCTION 

one whose ethical judgment had been broad- 
ened without being lowered ; who had learned 
that truth, though often strenuously enforced, 
is never so convincing as when stated in 
terms of beauty ; and to whom it had been 
revealed that to live naturally, sanely, and 
productively one must live humanly, with 
due regard to the earthly as well as to 
heavenly, with ease as well as earnestness of 
spirit, through play no less than through 
work, in the large resources of art, society, 
and humour, as well as with the ancient and 
well-tested rectitudes of the fathers. 

The harmonious play of his whole nature, 
the breadth of his interests and the sanity of 
his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful com- 
panion, and kept to the very end the fresh- 
ness of his mind and the spontaneity of his 
humour ; life never lost its savour for him, 
nor did his style part with its diffused but 
thoroughly individual humour. This latest 
collection of his papers, dealing with a wide 
range of subjects from the " Education of 
the Negro" to " Literature and the Stage," 
with characteristic comments on " Truth- 

[ xiv ] 



INTRODUCTION 

fulness " and " The Pursuit of Happiness," 
shows him at the end of his long and tire- 
less career as a writer still deeply interested 
in contemporary events, responsive to the 
appeal of the questions of the hour, and 
sensitive to all things which affected the 
dignity and authority of literature. In his 
interests, his bearing, his relations to the 
public life of the country, no less than in 
his work, he held fast to the best traditions 
of literature, and he has taken his place 
among the representative American men of 
Letters. 

HAMILTON W. MABIE. 



[xv] 



Fashions in Literature 

IF you examine a collection of prints of 
costumes of different generations, you 
are commonly amused by the ludicrous 
appearance of most of them, especially of 
those that are not familiar to you in your 
own decade. They are not only inappro- 
priate and inconvenient to your eye, but they 
offend your taste. You cannot believe that 
they were ever thought beautiful and be- 
coming. If your memory does not fail you, 
however, and you retain a little honesty of 
mind, you can recall the fact that a costume 
which seems to you ridiculous to-day had 
your warm approval ten years ago. You 
wonder, indeed, how you could ever have 
tolerated a costume which has not one grace- 
ful line, and has no more relation to the 
human figure than Mambrino's helmet had 



FASHIONS IN LI'TERATURE 

to a crown of glory. You cannot imagine 
how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt 
that gave your sweetheart the appearance of 
the great bell of Moscow^ or that you your- 
self could have been complacent in a coat 
the tails of which reached your heels, and 
the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, 
were between your shoulder-blades — you 
who are now devoted to a female figure that 
resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted 
by an isosceles triangle. 

These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or 
destroy correct proportions or hide deform- 
ities, are nowhere more evident than in the 
illustrations of works of fiction. The artist 
who collaborates with the contemporary 
novelist has a hard fate. If he is faithful to 
the fashions of the day, he earns the repute 
of artistic depravity in the eyes of the next 
generation. The novel may become a classic, 
because it represents human nature, or even 
the whimsicalities of a period ; but the illus- 
trations of the artist only provoke a smile, 
because he has represented merely the un- 
essential and the fleeting. The interest in 

[2] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

his work is archaeological, not artistic. The 
genius of the great portrait-painter may to 
some extent overcome the disadvantages of 
contemporary costume, but if the costume of 
his period is hideous and lacks the essential 
lines of beautv, his work is liable to need the 
apology of quaintness. The Greek artist and 
the mediaeval painter, when the costumes 
were really picturesque and made us forget 
the lack of simplicity in a noble sumptuous- 
ness, had never this posthumous difficulty to 
contend with. 

In the examination of costumes of different 
races and different ages, we are also struck 
by the fact that with primitive or isolated 
peoples costumes vary little from age to age, 
and fashion and the fashions are unrecog- 
nised, and a habit of dress which is dictated 
by climate, or has been proved to be com- 
fortable, is adhered to from one generation 
to another; while nations that we call highly 
civilised, meaning commonly not only Occi- 
dental peoples, but peoples called progressive, 
are subject to the most frequent and violent 
changes of fashions, not in generations only, 

[3] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

but in decades and years of a generation, as 
if the mass had no mind or taste of its own, 
but submitted to the irresponsible ukase of 
tailors and modistes, who are in alliance with 
enterprising manufacturers of novelties. In 
this higher civilisation a costume which is 
artistic and becoming has no more chance of 
permanence than one which is ugly and in- 
convenient. It might be inferred that this 
higher civilisation produces no better taste 
and discrimination, no more independent 
judgment, in dress than it does in literature. 
The vagaries in dress of the Western nations 
for a thousand years past, to go back no 
further, are certainly highly amusing, and 
would be humiliating to people who regarded 
taste and art as essentials of civilisation. But 
when we speak of civilisation, we cannot but 
notice that some of the great civilisations, 
the longest permanent and most notable for 
highest achievement in learning, science, 
art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the 
Egyptian, the Saracenic, the Chinese, were 
subject to no such vagaries in costume, but 
adhered to that which taste, climate, experi- 

[4] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

ence had determined to be the most useful 
and appropriate. And it is a singular com- 
ment upon our modern conceit that we make 
our own vagaries and chano'eableness, and 
not any fixed principles of art or of utility, 
the criterion of judgment on other races and 
other times. 

The more important result of the study 
of past fashions, in engravings and paint- 
ings, remains to be spoken of. It is that in 
all the illustrations, from the simplicity of 
Athens, through the artificiality of Louis 
XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, 
down to the undescribed modistic inventions 
of the first McKinley, there is discoverable 
a radical and primitive law of beauty. We 
acknowledge it among the Greeks, we en- 
counter it in one age and another. I mean 
a style of dress that is artistic as well as 
picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, 
that accords with the grace of the perfect 
human figure, and that gives as perfect satis- 
faction to the cultivated taste as a drawing 
by Raphael. While all the other illustra- 
tions of the human ingenuity in making the 

[5] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

human race appear fantastic or ridiculous 
amuse us or offend our taste, — except the 
tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now, 
— these few exceptions, classic or modern, 
give us permanent delight, and are recog- 
nised as following the eternal law of beauty 
and utility. And we know, notwithstanding 
the temporary triumph of bad taste and the 
public lack of any taste, that there is a stan- 
dard, artistic and imperishable 

The student of manners might find an 
interesting field in noting how, in our Occi- 
dental civilisations, fluctuations of opinions, 
of morals, and of literary style have been 
accompanied by more or less significant ex- 
hibitions of costumes. He will note in the 
Precieux of France and the Euphuist of Eng- 
land a corresponding effeminacy in dress ; 
in the frank paganism of the French Revolu- 
tion the affectation of Greek and Roman 
apparel, passing into the Directoire style in 
the Citizen and the Citizeness ; in the Calvin- 
istic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of 
New England the grim severity of their 
theology and morals. These examples are 

[6] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

interestino: as showins: an inclination to ex- 
press an inner condition l^y the outward ap- 
parel, as the Quakers indicate an inward 
peace by an external drabness, and the 
American Indian a bellicose disposition by 
red and yellow paint ; just as we express 
by red stripes our desire to kill men with 
artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them 
with cavalry. It is not possible to say 
whether these external displays are relics 
of barbarism or are enduring necessities of 
human nature. 

The fickleness of men in costume in a 
manner burlesques their shifty and uncertain 
taste in literature. A book or a certain 
fashion in letters wdll have a run like a gar- 
ment, and, like that, will pass away before it 
waxes old. It seems incredible, as we look 
back over the literary history of the past 
three centuries only, what prevailing styles 
and moods of expression, affectations, and 
prettinesses, each in turn, have pleased rea- 
sonably cultivated people. What tedious 
and vapid things they read and liked to 
read ! Think of the French, who had once 

[7] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

had a Villon, intoxicating themselves with 
somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, 
then, the French could match the paste eu- 
phuisms of Lyly with the novels of Scudery. 
Every modern literature has been subject to 
these epidemics and diseases. It is needless 
to dwell upon them in detail. Since the 
great diffusion of printing, these literary 
crazes have been more frequent and of 
shorter duration. We need go back no 
further than a generation to find abundant 
examples of eccentricities of style and ex- 
pression, of crazes over some author or some 
book, as unaccountable on principles of art 
as many of the fashions in social life. The 
more violent the attack, the sooner it is over. 
Readers of middle age can recall the furor 
over Tupper, the extravagant expectations 
as to the brilliant essayist Gilfillan, the soon- 
extinguished hopes of the poet Alexander 
Smith. For the moment the world waited 
in the belief of the rising of new stars, and 
as suddenly realised that it had been de- 
ceived. Sometimes we like ruggedness, and 

again we like things made easy. Within 

[8] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

a few years a distinguished Scotch clergy- 
man made a fortune by diluting a paragraph 
written by Saint Paul. It is in our memory 
how at one time all the boys tried to write 
like IMacaulay, and then like Carlylc, and 
then like Ruskin, and we have lived to see 
the day when all the girls would like to write 
like Heine. 

In less than twenty years we have seen 
wonderful changes in public taste and in the 
efforts of writers to meet it or to create it. 
We saw the everlastingly revived conflict 
between realism and romanticism. We saw 
the realist run into the naturalist, the natu- 
ralist into the animalist, the psychologist 
into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction 
to romance, in the form of what is called 
the historic novel, the receipt for which can 
be prescribed by an}^ competent pharmacist. 
The one essential in the ingredients is that 
the hero shall be only got out of one hole by 
dropping him into a deeper one, until — the 
proper serial length being attained — he is 
miraculously dropped out into daylight, and 
stands to receive the plaudits of a tender- 

[9] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

hearted world, that is fond of nothing so 
much as of fighting. 

The extraordinary vogue of certain recent 
stories is not so much to be wondered at 
when we consider the milHons that have 
been added to the readers of English during 
the past twenty-five years. The wonder is 
that a new book does not sell more largely, 
or it would be a wonder if the ability to buy 
kept pace with the ability to read, and if 
discrimination had accompanied the appetite 
for reading. The critics term these suc- 
cesses of some recent fictions "crazes," but 
they are really sustained by some desirable 
qualities — they are cleverly written, and they 
are for the moment undoubtedly entertain- 
ing. Some of them as undoubtedly appeal 
to innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity. 
I will call no names, because that would be 
to indict the public taste. This recent 
phenomenon of sales of stories by the hun- 
dred thousand is not, however, wholly due 
to quality. Another element has come in 
since the publishers have awakened to the 
fact that literature can be treated like mer- 

[lo] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

chandlse. To use their own plirase, they 
"handle" books as they would "handle" 
patent medicines, that is, the popular patent 
medicines that are desired because of the 
amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they 
are sold along with dry-goods and fancy no- 
tions. I am not objecting to this great and 
wide distribution any more than I am to the 
haste of fruit-dealers to market their prod- 
ucts before they decay. The wary critic will 
be very careful about dogmatising over the 
nature and distribution of literary products. 
It is no certain sign that a book is good be- 
cause it is popular, nor is it any more certain 
that it is good because it has a very limited 
sale. Yet we cannot help seeing that many 
of the books that are the subject of crazes 
utterly disappear in a very short time, wdiile 
many others, approved by only a judicious 
few, continue in the market and slowly be- 
come standards, considered as good stock 
by the booksellers and continually in a 
limited demand. 

The English essayists have spent a good 
deal of time lately in discussing the question 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

whether it is possible to tell a good con- 
temporary book from a bad one. Their 
hesitation is justified by a study of English 
criticism of new books in the quarterly, 
monthly, and weekly periodicals from the 
latter part of the eighteenth century to the 
last quarter of the nineteenth ; or, to name 
a definite period, from the verse of the Lake 
poets, from Shelley and Byron, down to 
Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet who has 
attained world-wide assent to his position in 
the first or second rank who was not at the 
hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery 
and bitter detraction. To be original in any 
degree was to be damned. And there is 
scarcel}'' one who was at first ranked as a 
great light during this period who is now 
known out of the biographical dictionary. 
Nothing in modern literature is more amaz- 
ing than the bulk of English criticism in the 
last three quarters of a century, so far as it 
concerned individual writers, both in poetry 
and prose. The literary rancour shown rose 
to the dignity almost of theological vitu- 
peration. 

[12] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 



Is there any way to tell a good book from 
a bad one ? Yes. As certainly as you can 
tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good 
esfSf from a bad one. Because there are 
hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs 
or the butter they eat, it does not follow 
that a normal taste should not know the 
difference. Because there is a highly artistic 
nation that w^elcomes the flavour of garlic in 
everything, and another which claims to be 
the most civilised in the world that cannot 
tell coffee from chicory, or because the an- 
cient Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the 
Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and tainted 
fish, it does not follow that there is not in 
the w^orld a wdiolesome taste for things 
natural and pure. 

It is clear that the critic of contemporary 
literature is quite as likely to be wrong as 
right. He is, for one thing, inevitably af- 
fected by the prevailing fashion of his little 
day. And, worse still, he is apt to make his 
own tastes and prejudices the standard of his 
judgment. His view is commonly provincial 
instead of cosmopolitan. In the English 

[13] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

period just referred to it is easy to see that 
most of the critical opinion was determined 
by political or theological animosity and 
prejudice. The rule was for a Tory to hit 
a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under what- 
ever literary guise he appeared. If the new 
writer was not orthodox in the view of his 
political or theological critic, he was not to 
be tolerated as poet or historian. Dr. John- 
son had said everything he could say against 
an author when he declared that he was 
a vile Whig. Macaulay, a Whig, always 
consulted his prejudices for his judgment, 
equally when he was reviewing Croker's 
Boswell or the impeachment of Warren 
Hastings. He hated Croker, — a hateful 
man, to be sure, — and when the latter pub- 
lished his edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw 
his opportunity, and exclaimed before he 
had looked at the book, as you will remem- 
ber, " Now I will dust his jacket." The 
standard of criticism does not lie with the 
individual in literature any more than it 
does in different periods as to fashions and 
manners. The world is pretty well agreed, 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

and always has been, as to the qualities that 
make a gentleman. And yet there was a 
time when the vilest and perhaps the most 
contemptible man who e\'er occupied the 
English throne, — and that is saying a great 
deal, — George IV, was universally called 
the " First Gentleman of Europe." The 
reproach might be somewhat lightened by 
the fact that George was a foreigner, but 
for the wider fact that no person of English 
stock has been on the throne since Saxon 
Harold, the chosen and imposed rulers of 
England having been French, Welsh, Scotch, 
and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of 
the English language, and many of them 
also of the English middle-class morality. 
The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist 
of the times of George III, having described 
a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a smuggler, 
an appropriator of public money, who always 
cheated his tradesmen, who was one and 
sometimes all of them together, and a prof- 
ligate generally, commonly adds, " But he 
was a perfect gentleman." And yet there 
has always been a standard that excludes 

[15] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

George IV from the rank of gentleman, 
as it excludes Tupper from the rank of 
poet. 

The standard of literary judgment, then, 
is not in the individual, — that is, in the taste 
and prejudice of the individual, — any more 
than it is in the immediate contemporary 
opinion, which is always in flux and reflux 
from one extreme to another; but it is in 
certain immutable principles and qualities 
which have been slowly evolved during the 
long historic periods of literary criticism. 
But how shall we ascertain what these prin- 
ciples are, so as to apply them to new cir- 
cumstances and new creations, holding on 
to the essentials and disregarding contem- 
porary tastes, prejudices, and appearances .f* 
We all admit that certain pieces of literature 
have become classic ; by general consent 
there is no dispute about them. How they 
have become so we cannot exactly explain. 
Some say by a mysterious settling of univer- 
sal opinion, the operation of which cannot 
be exactly defined. Others say that the 

highly developed critical judgment of a few 

[i6] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

persons, from time to time, lias established 
forever what we agree to call masterpieces. 
But this discussion is immaterial, since these 
supreme examples of literary excellence exist 
in all kinds of composition, — poetry, fable, 
romance, ethical teaching, prophecy, inter- 
pretation, history, humor, satire, devotional 
flight into the spiritual and supernatural, 
everything in which the human mind has 
exercised itself, — from the days of the 
Egyptian moralist and the Old Testament 
annalist and poet down to our scientific age. 
These masterpieces exist from many periods 
and in many languages, and they all have 
qualities in common which have insured their 
persistence. 

To discover what these qualities are that 
have insured permanence and promise in- 
definite continuance is to have a means of 
judging with an approach to scientific accu- 
racy our contemporary literature. There is 
no thing of beauty that does not conform to 
a law of order and beauty — poem, story, 
costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascer- 
tainable law of art. Nothing of man's mak- 

[17] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

ing is perfect, but any creation approximates 
perfection in the measure that it conforms to 
inevitable law. To ascertain this law, and 
apply it, in art or in literature, to the chang- 
ing conditions of our progressive life, is the 
business of the artist. It is the business of 
the critic to mark how the performance con- 
forms to or departs from the law evolved and 
transmitted in the long experience of the 
race. True criticism, then, is not a matter 
of caprice or of individual liking or disliking, 
nor of conformity to a prevailing and gener- 
ally temporary popular judgment. Individual 
judgment may be very interesting and have 
its value, depending upon the capacity of the 
judge. It was my good fortune once to fall 
in with a person who had been moved, by I 
know not what inspiration, to project himself 
out of his safe local conditions into France, 
Greece, Italy, Cairo, and Jerusalem. He 
assured me that he had seen nothing any- 
where in the wide world of nature and art to 
compare with the beauty of Nebraska. 

What are the qualities common to all the 

masterpieces of literature, or, let us say, to 

[i8] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

those that have endured In spite of imperfec- 
tions and local provincialisms ? 

First of all I should name simplicity, which 
includes lucidity of expression, the clear 
thouo^ht in fittino:, luminous words. And 
this is true when the thought is profound 
and the subject is as complex as life itself. 
This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in 
Jowett's translation of Plato, — which is as 
modern in feeling and phrase as anything 
done in Boston, — in the naif and direct 
Herodotus, and, above all, in the King James 
vernacular translation of the Bible, which is 
the great text-book of all modern literature. 

The second quality is knowledge of human 
nature. We can put up with the improba- 
ble in invention, because the improbable is 
always happening in life, but we cannot 
tolerate the so-called psychological juggling 
with the human mind, the perversion of the 
laws of the mind, the forcing of character to 
fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever ex- 
cursions the writer makes in fancy, w^e require 
fundamental consistency with human nature. 
And this is the reason why psychological 

[19] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

studies of the abnormal, or biographies of 
criminal lunatics are only interesting to 
pathologists and never become classics in 
literature. 

A third quality common to all master- 
pieces is what we call charm, a matter more 
or less of style, and which may be defined as 
the agreeable personality of the writer. This 
is indispensable. It is this personality which 
gives the final value to every work of art as 
well as of literature. It is not enough to 
copy nature or to copy, even accurately, the 
incidents of life. Only by digestion and 
transmutation through personality does any 
work attain the dignity of art. The great 
works of architecture, even, which are some- 
what determined by mathematical rule, owe 
their charm to the personal genius of their 
creators. For this reason our imitations of 
Greek architecture are commonly failures. 
To speak technically, the masterpiece of 
literature is characterised by the same knowl- 
edge of proportion and perspective as the 
masterpiece in art. 

If there is a standard of literary excellence, 

[20] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

as tliere is a law of beauty, — and it seems 
to nic tliat to doubt this in the intellectual 
world is to doubt the prevalence of order that 
exists in the natural, — it is certainly possible 
to ascertain whether a new production con- 
forms, and how far it conforms, to the uni- 
versally accepted canons of art. To work 
by this rule in literary criticism is to substi- 
tute something definite for the individual 
tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic. It 
is true that the vast body of that which we 
read is ephemeral, and justifies its existence 
by its obvious use for information, recreation, 
and entertainment. But to permit the im- 
pression to prevail that an unenlightened 
popular preference for a book, however many 
may hold it, is to be taken as a measure of 
its excellence, is like claiming that a debased 
Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good 
as a gold stater of Alexander, The case is 
infinitely worse than this ; for a slovenly 
literature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets 
slovenly thought and debases our entire intel- 
lectual life. 

It should be remembered, however, that 

[21] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

the creative faculty in man has not ceased, 
nor has puny man drawn all there is to be 
drawn out of the eternal wisdom. We are 
probably only in the beginning of our evolu- 
tion, and something new may always be ex- 
pected, that is, new and fresh applications of 
universal law. The critic of literature needs 
to be in an expectant and receptive frame of 
mind. Many critics approach a book with 
hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their 
business is to look for what is bad in it, and 
not for what is good. It seems to me that 
the first duty of the critic is to try to under- 
stand the author, to give him a fair chance 
by coming to his perusal with an open mind. 
Whatever book you read, or sermon or lec- 
ture you hear, give yourself for the time 
absolutely to its influence. This is just to 
the author, fair to the public, and, above all, 
valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critic 
himself. It is a very bad thing for the mem- 
ory and the judgment to get into a habit of 
reading carelessly or listening with distracted 
attention. I know of nothing so harmful to 
the strength of the mind as this habit. There 

[22] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

is a valuable mental training in closely follow- 
m^ a discourse that is valueless in itself. 
After the reader has unreservedly surren- 
dered himself to the influence of a book, and 
let his mind settle, as we say, and resume its 
own judgment, he is in a position to look at 
it objectively and to compare it with other 
facts of life and of literature dispassionately. 
He can then compare it as to form, substance, 
tone, with the enduring literature that has 
come down to us from all the ages. It is a 
phenomenon known to all of us that we may 
for the moment be carried away by a book 
which upon cool reflection we find is false in 
ethics and weak in construction. We find 
this because we have standards outside our- 
selves. 

I am not concerned to define here what is 
meant by literature. A great mass of it has 
been accumulated in the progress of mankind, 
and, fortunately for different wants and tem- 
peraments, it is as varied as the various minds 
that produced it. The main thing to be con- 
sidered is that this great stream of thought 
is the highest achievement and the most 

[23] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

valuable possession of mankind. It is not 
only that literature is the source of inspira- 
tion to youth and the solace of age, but it is 
what a national language is to a nation, the 
highest expression of its being. Whatever 
we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in 
the application of natural laws in industries, 
is an enlargement of our horizon, and a con- 
tribution to the highest needs of man, his 
intellectual life. The controversy between 
the claims of the practical life and the intel- 
lectual is as idle as the so-called conflict be- 
tween science and religion. And the highest 
and final expression of this life of man, his 
thought, his emotion, his feeling, his aspira- 
tion, whatever you choose to call it, is in the 
enduring literature he creates. He certainly 
misses half his opportunity on this planet 
who considers only the physical or what is 
called the practical. He is a man only half 
developed. I can conceive no more dreary 
existence than that of a man who is past the 
period of business activity, and who cannot, 
for his entertainment, his happiness, draw 
upon the great reservoir of literature. For 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

what did I come into this world if I am 
to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not 
like a tree visited by all the winds of heaven 
and the birds of the air? 

Those who concern themselves with the 
printed matter in books and periodicals are 
often in despair over the volume of it, and 
their actual inability to keep up with cur- 
rent literature. They need not worry. If all 
that appears in books, under the pressure of 
publishers and the ambition of experimenters 
in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader 
would be under any more obligation to read 
it than he is to see every individual flower 
and blossoming shrub. Specimens of the 
varieties would sufHce. But a vast propor- 
tion of it is the product of immature minds, 
and of a yearning for experience rather than 
a knowledge of life. There is no more obli- 
gation on the part of the person who would 
be well informed and cultivated to read all 
this than there is to read all the coloured in- 
cidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes 
repeated daily, with sameness of effect, in the 
newspapers, some of the most widely circu- 

[25] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

lated of which are a composite of the police 

gazette and the comic almanac. A great deal 

of the reading done is mere contagion, one 

form or another of communicated grippe, 

and it is consoling and even surprising to 

know that if you escape the run of it for a 

season, you have lost nothing appreciable. 

Some people, it has been often said, make it 

a rule never to read a book until it is from 

one to five years old. By this simple device 

they escape the necessity of reading most of 

them, but this is only a part of their gain. 

Considering the fact that the world is full of 

books of the highest value for cultivation, 

entertainment, and information, which the 

utmost leisure we can spare from other 

pressing avocations does not suffice to give 

us knowledge of, it does seem to be Httle 

less than a moral and intellectual sin to 

flounder about blindly in the flood of new 

publications. I am speaking, of course, of 

the general mass of readers, and not of the 

specialists who must follow their subjects 

with ceaseless inquisition. But for most of 

us who belong to the still comparatively few 

[ 26 ] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

who really read books, the main object of life 
is not to keep up with the printing-press, any 
more than it is the main object of sensible 
people to follow all the extremes and whims 
of fashion in dress. When a fashion in 
literature has passed, we are surprised that 
it should ever have seemed worth the trouble 
of studying or imitating. When the special 
craze has passed, we notice another thing, 
and that is that the author, not being of the 
first rank or of the second, has generally 
contributed to the world all that he has to 
give in one book, and our time has been 
wasted on his other books; and also that in 
a special kind of writing in a given period — 
let us say, for example, the historico-roman- 
tic — we perceive that it all has a common 
character, is constructed on the same lines of 
adventure and with a prevailing type of hero 
and heroine, according to the pattern set by 
the first one or two stories of the sort which 
became popular, and we see its more or less 
mechanical construction, and how easily it 
degenerates into commercial book-making. 
Now while some of this writing has an indi- 

[27] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

vidual flavour that makes it entertaining and 

profitable in this way, we may be excused 

from attempting to follow it all merely 

because it happens to be talked about for 

the moment, and generally talked about in 

a very undiscriminating manner. We need 

not in any company be ashamed if we have 

not read it all, especially if we are ashamed 

that, considering the time at our disposal, 

we have not made the acquaintance of the 

great and small masterpieces of literature. 

It is said that the fashion of this world 

passeth away, and so does the mere fashion 

in literature, the fashion that does not follow 

the eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and 

contribute to the intellectual and spiritual 

part of man. Otherwise it is only a waiting 

in a material existence, like the lovers, in the 

words of the Arabian story-teller, " till there 

came to them the Destroyer of Delights and 

the Sunderer of Companies, he who layeth 

waste the palaces and peopleth the tombs." 

Without special anxiety, then, to keep 

pace with all the ephemeral in literature, 

lest we should miss for the moment some- 

[28] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

thing that is permanent, we can rest content 
in tlie vast accumulation of the tried and 
genuine tliat the ages have given us. Any- 
thing that really belongs to literature to-day 
we shall certainly find awaiting us to-morrow. 
The better part of the life of man is in 
and by the imagination. This is not gener- 
ally believed, because it is not generally be- 
lieved that the chief end of man is the 
accumulation of intellectual and spiritual 
material. Hence it is that what is called 
a practical education is set above the mere 
enlargement and enrichment of the mind ; 
and the possession of the material is valued, 
and the intellectual life is undervalued. But 
it should be remembered that the best prepa- 
ration for a practical and useful life is in the 
high development of the powers of the mind, 
and that, commonly, by a culture that is not 
considered practical. The notable fact about 
the group of great parliamentary orators in 
the days of George III is the exhibition of 
their intellectual resources in the entire 
world of letters, the classics, and ancient 
and modern history. Yet all of them owed 

[29] 



FASHIONS IN LITERATURE 

their development to a strictly classical 
training in the schools. And most of them 
had not only the gift of the imagination 
necessary to great eloquence, but also were 
so mentally disciplined by the classics that 
they handled the practical questions upon 
which they legislated with clearness and 
precision. The great masters of finance were 
the classically trained orators William Pitt 
and Charles James Fox. 

In fine, to return to our knowledge of the 
short life of fashions that are for the moment 
striking, why should we waste precious time 
in chasing meteoric appearances, when we 
can be warmed and invigorated in the sun- 
shine of the great literatures? 



[30] 



The American Newspaper 

OUR theme for the hour is the Amer- 
ican Newspaper. It is a subject in 
which everybody is interested, and 
about which it is not poHte to say that any- 
body is not well informed ; for, although 
there are scattered through the land many 
persons, I am sorry to say, unable to pay for 
a newspaper, I have never yet heard of any- 
body unable to edit one. 

The topic has many points of view, and 
invites various study and comment. In our 
limited time we must select one only. We 
have heard a great deal about the power, the 
opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the 
press. The time has come for a more philo- 
sophical treatment of it, for an inquiry into 
its relations to our complex civilisation, for 
some ethical account of it as one of the 
developments of our day, and for some dis- 
cussion of the effect it is producing, and 

[31] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

likely to produce, on the education of the 
people. Has the time come, or is it near at 
hand, when we can point to a person who is 
alert, superficial, ready and shallow, self-con- 
fident and half-informed, and say, " There is a 
product of the American newspaper " ? The 
newspaper is not a wilful creation, nor an 
isolated phenomenon, but the legitimate out- 
come of our age, as much as our system of 
popular education. And I trust that some 
competent observer will make, perhaps for 
this association, a philosophical study of it. 
My task here is a much humbler one. I 
have thought that it may not be unprofitable 
to treat the newspaper from a practical and 
even somewhat mechanical point of view. 

The newspaper is a private enterprise. Its 
object is to make money for its owner. 
Whatever motive may be given out for start- 
ing a newspaper, expectation of profit by it 
is the real one, whether the newspaper is 
religious, political, scientific, or literary. The 
exceptional cases of newspapers devoted to 
ideas or "causes" without regard to profit 
are so few as not to affect the rule. Com- 

[32] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

monly, the cause, the sect, the party, the 
trade, the delusion, the idea, gets its news- 
paper, its organ, its advocate, only when 
some individual thinks he can see a pecu- 
niary return in establishing it. 

This motive is not lower than that which 
leads people into any other occupation or 
profession. To make a living, and to have 
a career, is the original incentive in all cases. 
Even in purely philanthropical enterprises the 
driving-wheel that keeps them in motion for 
any length of time is the salary paid the 
working members. So powerful is this in- 
centive, that sometimes the wheel will con- 
tinue to turn round when there is no sfrist 
to grind. It sometimes happens that the 
friction of the philanthropic machinery is so 
great, that but very little power is transmitted 
to the object for which the machinery was 
made. I knew a devoted agent of the Ameri- 
can Colonisation Society, who, for several 
years, collected in Connecticut just enough, 
for the cause, to buy his clothes, and pay his 
board at a good hotel. 

It is scarcely necessary to say, except to 
3 [ZZ] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

prevent a possible misapprehension, that the 
editor who has no high ideals, no intention of 
benefiting his fellow-men by his newspaper, 
and uses it unscrupulously as a means of 
money-making only, sinks to the level of 
the physician and the lawyer who have no 
higher conception of their callings than that 
they offer opportunities for getting money 
by appeals to credulity, and by assisting in 
evasions of the law. 

If the excellence of a newspaper is not 
always measured by its profitableness, it is 
generally true, that, if it does not pay its 
owner, it is valueless to the public. Not all 
newspapers which make money are good, for 
some succeed by catering to the lowest tastes 
of respectable people, and to the prejudice, 
ignorance, and passion of the lowest class ; 
but, as a rule, the successful journal pecunia- 
rily is the best journal. The reasons for this 
are on the surface. The impecunious news- 
paper cannot give its readers promptly the 
news, nor able discussion of the news, and, 
still worse, it cannot be independent. The 
political journal that relies for support upon 

[34] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

drippings of party favour or patronage, the 
general newspaper that finds it necessary to 
existence to nianipuLatc stock reports, the re- 
ligious weekly that draws precarious support 
from puffing doubtful enterprises, the literary 
paper that depends upon the approval of 
publishers, are poor affairs, and, in the long 
run or short run, come to grief. Some news- 
papers do succeed by sensationalism, as some 
preachers do ; by a kind of quackery, as some 
doctors do ; by trimming and shifting to any 
momentary popular prejudice, as some poli- 
ticians do ; by becoming the paid advocate of 
a personal ambition or a corporate enter- 
prise, as some lawyers do: but the newspaper 
only becomes a real power when it is able, 
on the basis of pecuniary independence, to 
free itself from all such entanglements. An 
editor who stands with hat in hand has the 
respect accorded to any other beggar. 

The recognition of the fact that the news- 
paper is a private and purely business enter- 
prise will help to define the mutual relations 
of the editor and the public. His claim upon 
the public is exactly that of any manufacturer 

[35] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

or dealer. It is that of the man who makes 
cloth, or the grocer who opens a shop : neither 
has a right to complain if the public does not 
buy of him. If the buyer does not like a 
cloth half shoddy, or coffee half chicory, he 
will go elsewhere. If the subscriber does not 
like one newspaper, he takes another, or none. 
The appeal for newspaper support on the 
ground that such a journal ought to be sus- 
tained by an enlightened community, or on 
any other ground than that it is a good article 
that people want, — or would want if they 
knew its value, — is purely childish in this 
age of the world. If any person wants to 
start a periodical devoted to decorated teapots, 
with the noble view of inducing the people to 
live up to his idea of a teapot, very good ; 
but he has no right to complain if he fails. 

On the other hand, the public has no 
rights in the newspaper except what it pays 
for; even the "old subscriber" has none, 
except to drop the paper if it ceases to please 
him. The notion that the subscriber has a 
right to interfere in the conduct of the paper, 

or the reader to direct its opinions, is based 

[36] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

on a misconception of what the newspaper is. 
The claim of tlie pubhc to have its communi- 
cations printed in the paper is equally base- 
less. Whether they shall be printed or not 
rests in the discretion of the editor, having 
reference to his own private interest, and to 
his apprehension of tlie public good. Nor 
is he bound to give an}-^ reason for his re- 
fusal. It is purely in his discretion whether 
he will admit a reply to anything that has 
appeared in his columns. No one has a 
right to demand it. Courtesy and policy 
may grant it ; but the right to it does not 
exist. If any one is injured, he may seek his 
remedy at law ; and I should like to see 
the law of libel such and so administered 
that any person injured by a libel in the 
newspaper, as well as by slander out of it, 
could be sure of prompt redress. While the 
subscriber acquires no right to dictate to the 
newspaper, we can imagine an extreme case 
when he should have his money back which 
had been paid in advance, if the newspaper 
totally changed its character. If he had 
contracted with a dealer to supply him with 

[37] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

hard coal during the winter, he might have a 
remedy if the dealer delivered only charcoal 
in the coldest weather; and so if he paid for 
a Roman-Catholic journal which suddenly 
became an organ of the spiritists. 

The advertiser acquires no more rights in 
the newspaper than the subscriber. He is 
entitled to use the space for which he pays 
by the insertion of such material as is ap- 
proved by the editor. He gains no interest 
in any other part of the paper, and has no 
more claim to any space in the editorial 
columns, than any other one of the public. 
To give him such space would be unbusi- 
ness-like, and the extension of a preference 
which would be unjust to the rest of the 
public. Nothing more quickly destroys the 
character of a journal, begets distrust of it, 
and so reduces its value, than the well- 
founded suspicion that its editorial columns 
are the property of advertisers. Even a 
religious journal will, after a while, be in- 
jured by this. 

Yet it must be confessed that here is 
one of the greatest difHculties of modern 

[38] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

journalism. The newspaper must be cheap. 
It is, considering the immense cost to pro- 
duce it, the cheapest product ever offered to 
man. Most newspapers cost more than they 
sell for; they could not live by subscriptions; 
for any profits, they certainly depend upon 
advertisements. The advertisements depend 
upon the circulation; the circulation is likely 
to dwindle if too much space is occupied by 
advertisements, or if it is evident that the 
paper belongs to its favoured advertisers. 
The counting-room desires to conciliate the 
advertisers ; the editor looks to making a 
paper satisfactory to his readers. Between 
this see-saw of the necessary subscriber and 
the necessary advertiser, a good many news- 
papers go down. This difficulty would be 
measurably removed by the admission of the 
truth that the newspaper is a strictly busi- 
ness enterprise, depending for success upon 
a qicid pro quo between all parties con- 
nected with it, and upon integrity in its 
management. 

Akin to the false notion that the news- 
paper is a sort of open channel that the 

[39] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

public may use as it chooses, is the concep- 
tion of it as a charitable institution. The 
newspaper, which is the property of a private 
person as much as a drug-shop is, is expected 
to perform for nothing services which would 
be asked of no other private person. There 
is scarcely a charitable enterprise to which 
it is not asked to contribute of its space, 
which is money, ten times more than other 
persons in the community, who are ten times 
as able as the owner of the newspaper, con- 
tribute. The journal is considered "mean" 
if it will not surrender its columns freely to 
notices and announcements of this sort. If 
a manager has a new hen-coop or a new 
singer he wishes to introduce to the public, 
he comes to the newspaper, expecting to have 
his enterprise extolled for nothing, and prob- 
ably never thinks that it would be just as 
proper for him to go to one of the regular 
advertisers in the paper and ask him to give 
up his space. Anything, from a church pic- 
nic to a brass-band concert for the benefit 
of the widow of the triangles, asks the news- 
paper to contribute. The party in politics, 

[40] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 



whose principles the editor advocates, has no 
doubt of its rightful claim upon him, not only 
upon the editorial columns, but upon the 
whole newspaper. It asks without hesita- 
tion that the newspaper should take up its 
valuable space by printing hundreds and 
often thousands of dollars' worth of political 
announcements in the course of a protracted 
campaign, when it never would think of get- 
ting its halls, its speakers, and its brass 
bands, free of expense. Churches, as well as 
parties, expect this sort of charity. I have 
known rich churches, to whose members it 
was a convenience to have their Sunday and 
other services announced, withdraw the an- 
nouncements when the editor declined any 
longer to contribute a weekly fifty-cents' 
w^orth of space. No private persons contrib- 
ute so much to charity, in proportion to 
ability, as the newspaper. Perhaps it will 
get credit for this in the next world : it cer- 
tainly never does in this. 

The chief function of the newspaper is to 
collect and print the news. Upon the kind of 
news that should be gathered and published, 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

we shall remark farther on. The second 
function is to elucidate the news, and com- 
ment on it, and show its relations. A third 
function is to furnish reading-matter to the 
general public. 

Nothing is so difficult for the manager as 
to know what news is : the instinct for it is 
a sort of sixth sense. To discern out of the 
mass of materials collected not only what is 
most likely to interest the public, but what 
phase and aspect of it will attract most atten- 
tion, and the relative importance of it ; to 
tell the day before or at midnight what the 
world will be talking about in the morning, 
and what it will want the fullest details of, 
and to meet that want in advance, — requires 
a peculiar talent. There is always some 
topic on which the public wants instant infor- 
mation. It is easy enough when the news is 
developed, and everybody is discussing it, for 
the editor to fall in ; but the success of the 
news printed depends upon a pre-apprehen- 
sion of all this. Some papers, which neverthe- 
less print all the news, are always a day behind, 
do not appreciate the popular drift till it has 

[ 42 ] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 



gone to something else, and err as much by 
clinging to a subject after it is dead as by not 
taking it up before it was fairly born. The 
public craves eagerly for only one thing at 
a time, and soon wearies of that ; and it is 
to the newspaper's profit to seize the exact 
point of a debate, the thrilling moment of an 
accident, the pith of an important discourse ; 
to throw itself into it as if life depended on 
it, and for the hour to flood the popular 
curiosity with it as an engine deluges a 
fire. 

Scarcely less important than promptly 
seizing and printing the news is the attrac- 
tive arrangement of it, its effective presen- 
tation to the eye. Two papers may have 
exactly the same important intelligence, 
identically the same despatches : the one 
will be called bright, attractive, " newsy ; " 
the other, dull and stupid. 

We have said nothing yet about that, 
which, to most people, is the most important 
aspect of the newspaper, — the editor's respon- 
sibility to the public for its contents. It is 
sufficient briefly to say here, that it is exactly 

[43] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

the responsibility of every other person in 
society, — the full responsibility of his oppor- 
tunity. He has voluntarily taken a position 
in which he can do a great deal of good or a 
great deal of evil, and he should be held and 
judged by his opportunity: it is greater than 
that of the preacher, the teacher, the congress- 
man, the physician. He occupies the loftiest 
pulpit ; he is in his teacher s desk seven days 
in the week ; his voice can be heard farther 
than that of the most lusty fog-horn politi- 
cian ; and often, I am sorry to say, his columns 
outshine the shelves of the druggist in dis- 
play of proprietary medicines. Nothing else 
ever invented has the public attention as 
the newspaper has, or is an influence so con- 
stant and universal. It is this large oppor- 
tunity that has given the impression that the 
newspaper is a public rather than a private 
enterprise. 

It was a nebulous but suggestive remark 
that the newspaper occupies the borderland 
between literature and common sense. Lit- 
erature it certainly is not, and in the popular 
apprehension it seems often too erratic and 

[44] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 



variable to be credited with the balance- 
wheel of sense; but it must have something 
of the charm of the one, and the steadiness 
and sagacity of the other, or it will fail to 
please. The model editor, 1 believe, has yet 
to appear. Notwithstanding the traditional 
reputation of certain editors in the past, they 
could not be called great editors by our 
standards; for the elements of modern jour- 
nalism did not exist in their time. The old 
newspaper was a broadside of stale news, 
w^ith a moral essay attached. Perhaps Ben- 
jamin Franklin, with our facilities, would 
have been very near the ideal editor. There 
was nothing he did not wish to know ; and 
no one excelled him in the ability to com- 
municate what he found out to the average 
mind. He came as near as anybody ever 
did to marrying common sense to literature: 
he had it in him to make it sufificient for 
journalistic purposes. He was what some- 
body said Carlyle was, and w^hat the Ameri- 
can editor ought to be, — a vernacular man. 
The assertion has been made recently, 
publicly, and with evidence adduced, that 

[45] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

the American newspaper is the best in the 
world. It is like the assertion that the 
American government is the best in the 
world; no doubt it is, for the American 
people. 

Judged by broad standards, it may safely 
be admitted that the American newspaper is 
susceptible of some improvement, and that 
it has something to learn from the journals 
of other nations. We shall be better em- 
ployed in correcting its weaknesses than in 
complacently contemplating its excellences. 

Let us examine it in its three departments 
already named, — its news, editorials, and 
miscellaneous reading-matter. 

In particularity and comprehensiveness of 

news-collecting, it may be admitted that the 

American newspapers for a time led the 

world. I mean in the picking-up of local 

intelligence, and the use of the telegraph to 

make it general. And with this arose the 

odd notion that news is made important by 

the mere fact of its rapid transmission over 

the wire. The English journals followed, 

speedily overtook, and some of the wealthier 

[ 46 ] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

ones perhaps surpassed, the American In the 
use of the telegraph, and in the presentation 
of some sorts of local news; nut of casualties, 
and small city and neighbourhood events, 
and social gossip (until very recently), but 
certainly in the business of the law courts, 
and the crimes and mishaps that come within 
police and legal supervision. The leading 
papers of the German press, though strong 
in correspondence and in discussion of 
affairs, are far less comprehensive in their 
news than the American or the English. 
The French journals, we are accustomed to 
say, are not newspapers at all. And this is 
true as we use the word. Until recently, 
nothing has been of importance to the 
Frenchman except himself ; and what hap- 
pened outside of France, not directly affect- 
ing his glory, his profit, or his pleasure, did 
not interest him : hence, one could nowhere 
so securely intrench himself against the news 
of the world as behind the barricade of the 
Paris journals. But let us not make a mis- 
take in this matter. We may have more to 
learn from the Paris journals than from any 

[47] 



rUE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

others. If they do not give what we call 
news — local news, events, casualties, the 
happenings of the day, — they do give ideas, 
opinions ; they do discuss politics, the social 
drift; they give the intellectual ferment of 
Paris; they supply the material that Paris 
likes to talk over, the badinage of the boule- 
vard, the wit of the salon, the sensation of 
the stage, the new movement in literature 
and in politics. This may be important, or 
it may be trivial : it is commonly more in- 
teresting than much of that which we call 
news. 

Our very facility and enterprise in news- 
gathering have overwhelmed our newspapers, 
and it may be remarked that editorial dis- 
crimination has not kept pace with the facil- 
ities. We are overpowered with a mass of 
undigested intelligence, collected for the 
most part without regard to value. The 
force of the newspaper is expended in ex- 
tending these facilities, with little regard 
to discriminating selection. The burden is 
already too heavy for the newspaper, and 

wearisome to the public. 

[48] 



THE AMERICAN NEJVSPAPER 



The publication of the news is the most 
important function of the paper. How is It 
gathered? We must confess that it is 
gathered very much by chance. A drag- 
net is thrown out, and whatever comes is 
taken. An examination into the process of 
collectino' shows what sort of news we are 
Hkely to get, and that nine-tenths of that 
printed is collected without much intelli- 
gence exercised in selection. The alliance 
of the associated press with the telegraph 
company is a fruitful source of news of an 
inferior quality. Of course, it is for the in- 
terest of the telegraph company to swell the 
volume to be transmitted. It is impossible 
for the associated press to have an agent in 
every place to which the telegraph pene- 
trates : therefore the telegraphic operators 
often act as its purveyors. It is for their 
interest to send something; and their judg- 
ment of what is important is not only biassed, 
but is formed by purely local standards. Our 
news, therefore, is largely set in motion by 
telegraphic operators, by agents trained to 
regard only the accidental, the startling, the 

4 [49] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

abnormal, as news ; it is picked up by sharp 
prowlers about town, whose pay depends 
upon finding something, who are looking 
for something spicy and sensational, or which 
may be dressed up and exaggerated to satisfy 
an appetite for novelty and high flavour, and 
who regard casualties as the chief news. 
Our newspapers every day are loaded with 
accidents, casualties, and crimes concerning 
people of whom we never heard before and 
never shall hear again, the reading of which 
is of no earthly use to any human being. 

What is news ? What is it that an intelli- 
gent public should care to hear of and talk 
about? Run your eye down the columns of 
your journal. There was a drunken squabble 
last night in a New York groggery; there is 
a petty but carefully elaborated village scan- 
dal about a foolish girl ; a woman acciden- 
tally dropped her baby out of a fourth-story 
window in Maine; in Connecticut, a wife, 
by mistake, got into the same railway train 
with another woman's husband ; a child fell 
into a well in New Jersey; there is a column 
about a peripatetic horse-race, which exhibits, 

[50] 



THE AMERICAN NEJVSPAPER 



like a circus, from city to city; a labourer in 
a remote town In Pennsylvania had a sun- 
stroke; there is an edifying dying speech of 
a murderer, the love-letter of a suicide, tlie 
set-to of a couple of congressmen ; and there 
are columns about the gigantic war of half a 
dozen politicians over the appointment of a 
sugar-gauger. Granted that this pabulum 
is desired by the reader, why not save the 
expense of transmission by having several 
columns of it stereotyped, to be reproduced 
at proper intervals ? With the date changed, 
it would always have its original value, and 
perfectly satisfy the demand, if a demand ex- 
ists, for this sort of news. 

This is not, as you see, a description of 
your journal : it is a description of only one 
portion of it. It is a complex and wonderful 
creation. Every morning it is a mirror of 
the world, more or less distorted and imper- 
fect, but such a mirror as it never had held 
up to it before. But consider how much 
space Is taken up with mere trivialities and 
vulgarities under the name of news. And 
this evil is likely to continue and increase 

[51] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

until news-gatherers learn that more Im- 
portant than the reports of accidents and 
casualties is the intelligence of opinions and 
thoughts, the moral and intellectual move- 
ments of modern life. A horrible assassina- 
tion In India is Instantly telegraphed ; but 
the progress of such a vast movement as 
that of the Wahabee revival in Islam, which 
may change the destiny of great provinces, 
never gets itself put upon the wires. We 
hear promptly of a land-slide in Switzerland, 
but only very slowly of a political agitation 
that is chanQ-ino^ the constitution of the 
republic. It should be said, however, that 
the daily newspaper is not alone responsible 
for this : It is what the age and the commu- 
nity where it is published make It. So far as 
I have observed, the majority of the readers 
in America peruses eagerly three columns 
about a mill between an English and a nat- 
uralised American prize-fighter, but will 
.only glance at a column report of a debate in 
'the English parliament which involves a rad- 
ical change in the whole policy of England ; 
and devours a page about the Chantilly races, 

[52] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

while it ignores a paragraph concerning the 
suppression of the Jesuit schools. 

Our newspapers arc overwhelmed with 
material that is of no importance. The 
obvious remedy for this would be more 
intelligent direction in the collection of news, 
and more careful sifting and supervision of it 
when gathered. It becomes every day more 
apparent to every manager that such discrim- 
ination is more necessary. There is no 
limit to the various intelligence and gossip 
that our complex life offers: no paper is big 
enough to contain it ; no reader has time 
enough to read it. And the journal must 
cease to be a sort of waste-basket at the end 
of a telegraph wire, into which any reporter, 
telegraph operator, or gossip-monger can 
dump whatever he pleases. We must get 
rid of the superstition that value is given to 
an unimportant " item " by sending it a 
thousand miles over a wire. 

Perhaps the most striking feature of the 
American newspaper, especially of the coun- 
try weekly, is its enormous development of 
local and neighbourhood news. It is of 

[53] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

recent date. Horace Greeley used to advise 
the country editors to give small space to 
the general news of the vi^orld, but to cul- 
tivate assiduously the home field, to glean 
every possible detail of private life in the 
circuit of the county, and print it. The 
advice was shrewd for a metropolitan editor, 
and it was not without its profit to the coun- 
try editor. It was founded on a deep knowl- 
edge of human nature; namely, upon the 
fact that people read most eagerly that 
which they already know, if it is about them- 
selves or their neighbours, if it is a report 
of something they have been concerned in, 
a lecture they have heard, a fair, or festival, 
or wedding, or fiineral, or barn-raising they 
have attended. The result is column after 
column of short paragraphs of gossip and 
trivialities, chips, chips, chips. Mr. Sales is 
contemplating erecting a new counter in his 
store ; his rival opposite has a new sign ; 
Miss Bumps of Gath is visiting her cousin. 
Miss Smith of Bozrah ; the sheriff has 
painted his fence ; Farmer Brown has lost 
his cow ; the eminent member from Neopo- 

[54] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

lis has })ut an ell on one end of his mansion, 
and a mortoao-e on the other. 

On the face of it nothing is so vapid and 
profitless as column after column of this 
reading. These " items " have very little 
interest, except to those who already know 
the facts ; but those concerned like to see 
them in print, and take the newspaper on 
that account. This sort of inanity takes the 
place of reading-matter that might be of 
benefit, and its effect must be to belittle and 
contract the mind. But this is not the most 
serious objection to the publication of these 
worthless details. It cultivates self-con- 
sciousness in the community, and love of 
notoriety ; it develops vanity and self-impor- 
tance, and elevates the trivial in life above 
the essential. 

And this brings me to speak of the mania 
in this age, and especially in America, for 
notoriety in social life as well as in politics. 
The newspapers are the vehicle of it, some- 
times the occasion, but not the cause. The 
newspaper may have fostered — it has not 
created — this hunger for publicity. Almost 

[55] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

everybody talks about the violation of 
decency and the sanctity of private life by 
the newspaper in the publication of person- 
alities and the gossip of society ; and the 
very people who make these strictures are 
often those who regard the paper as without 
enterprise and dull, if it does not report in 
detail their weddings, their balls and parties, 
the distinguished persons present, the dress 
of the ladies, the sumptuousness of the 
entertainment, if it does not celebrate their 
church services and festivities, their social 
meetings, their new house, their dis- 
tinguished arrivals at this or that watering- 
place. I believe every newspaper manager 
will bear me out in saying that there is a 
constant pressure on him to print much 
more of such private matter than his judg- 
ment and taste permit or approve, and that 
the gossip which is brought to his notice, 
with the hope that he will violate the sensi- 
tiveness of social life by printing it, is far 
away larger in amount than all that he 
publishes. 

To return for a moment to the subject of 

[56] 



rHE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 



general news. The characteristic of our 

modern civilisation is sensitiveness, or, as 
the doctors say, nervousness. Perhaps the 
philanthropist would term it sympathy. No 
doubt an exciting cause of it is the adapta- 
tion of electricity to the transmission of facts 
and ideas. The telegraph, we say, has put 
us in sympathy with all the world. And we 
reckon this enlargement of nerve contact 
somehow a gain. Our bared nerves are 
played upon by a thousand wires. Nature, 
no doubt, has a method of hardening or 
deadening them to these shocks; but, never- 
theless, every person who reads is a focus for 
the excitements, the ills, the troubles, of all 
the world. In addition to his local pleas- 
ures and annoyances, he is in a manner 
compelled to be a sharer in the universal 
uneasiness. It might be worth while to 
inquire what effect this exciting accumula- 
tion of the news of the world upon an indi- 
vidual or a community has upon happiness 
and upon character. Is the New-England 
man any better able to bear or deal with his 
extraordinary climate by the daily knowledge 

[57] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

of the weather all over the globe ? Is a man 
happier, or improved in character, by the 
woful tale of a world's distress and appre- 
hension that greets him every morning at 
breakfast ? Knowledge, we know, increases 
sorrow ; but I suppose the offset to that is, 
that strength only comes through suffering. 
But this is a digression. 

Not second in importance to any depart- 
ment of the journal is the reporting ; that is, 
the special reporting as distinguished from 
the more general news-gathering. I mean 
the reports of proceedings in Congress, in 
conventions, assemblies, and conferences, 
public conversations, lectures, sermons, in- 
vestigations, law trials, and occurrences of 
all sorts that rise into general importance. 
These reports are the basis of our knowl- 
edge and opinions. If they are false or 
exaggerated, we are ignorant of what is 
taking place, and misled. It is of infinitely 
more importance that they should be abso- 
lutely trustworthy than that the editorial 
comments should be sound and wise. If 
the reports on affairs can be depended on, 

Lss] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

the public can form its own opinion, and 
act intelligently. And, if the public has a 
right to demand anything of a newspaper, 
it is that its reports of what occurs shall be 
faithfully accurate, unprejudiced, and colour- 
less. They ought not to be editorials, or 
the vehicles of personal opinion and feeling. 
The interpretation of the facts they give 
should be left to the editor and the public. 
There should be a sharp line drawn between 
the report and the editorial. 

I am inclined to think that the reporting 
department is the weakest in the American 
newspaper, and that there is just ground 
for the admitted public distrust of it. Too 
often, if a person would know what has 
taken place in a given case, he must read 
the reports in half a dozen journals, then 
strike a general average of probabilities, 
allowing for the personal equation, and then 
— suspend his judgment. Of course, there 
is much excellent reporting, and there are 
many able men engaged in it w^ho reflect 
the highest honour upon their occupation. 
And the press of no other country shows 

[59] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

more occasional brilliant feats in reporting 
than ours : these are on occasions when the 
newspapers make special efforts. Take the 
last two national party conventions. The 
fulness, the accuracy, the vividness, with 
which their proceedings were reported in the 
leading journals, were marvellous triumphs 
of knowledge, skill, and expense. The con- 
ventions were so photographed by hundreds 
of pens, that the public outside saw them 
almost as distinctly as the crowd in attend- 
ance. This result was attained because the 
editors determined that it should be, sent 
able men to report, and demanded the best 
work. But take an opposite and a daily illus- 
tration of reporting, that of the debates and 
proceedings in Congress. I do not refer to 
the specials of various journals which are 
good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may 
be, and commonly coloured by partisan con- 
siderations, but the regular synopsis sent 
to the country at large. Now, for some 
years it has been inadequate, frequently un- 
intelligible, often grossly misleading, failing 

wholly to give the real spirit and meaning 

[60] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

of tlie most important discussions; and it 
is as dry as chips Ijcsides. To be both 
stupid and inaccurate is the unpardonable 
sin in journalism. Contrast these reports 
with the lively and faithful pictures of the 
French Assembly which are served to the 
Paris papers. 

Before speaking of the reasons for the 
public distrust in reports, it is proper to 
put in one qualification. The public itself, 
and not the newspapers, is the great factory 
of baseless rumours and untruths. Although 
the newspaper unavoidably gives currency 
to some of these, it is the great corrector 
of popular rumours. Concerning any event, 
a hundred different versions and conflicting 
accounts are instantly set afloat. These 
would run on, and become settled but un- 
founded beliefs, as private whispered scandals 
do run, if the newspaper did not intervene. 
It is the business of the newspaper, on every 
occurrence of moment, to chase down the 
rumours, and to find out the facts and print 
them, and set the public mind at rest. The 

newspaper publishes them under a sense of 

[6i] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

responsibility for its statements. It is not 
by any means always correct; but I know 
that it is the aim of most newspapers to 
discharge this important public function 
faithfully. When this country had few 
newspapers it was ten times more the prey 
of false reports and delusions than it is 
now\ 

Reporting requires as high ability as 
editorial writing ; perhaps of a different 
kind, though in the history of American 
journalism the best reporters have often 
become the best editors. Talent of this 
kind must be adequately paid ; and it hap- 
pens that in America the reporting field 
is so vast that few journals can afford to 
make the reporting department correspond 
in ability to the editorial, and I doubt if 
the importance of doing so is yet fully 
realised. An intelligent and representative 
synopsis of a lecture or other public per- 
formance is rare. The ability to grasp a 
speaker's meaning, or to follow a long dis- 
course, and reproduce either in spirit, and 

fairly, in a short space, is not common. 

[62] 



THE AMERICAN NEIVSPAPER 

When the pubHc which lias been present 
reads the inaccurate report, it loses con- 
fidence in the newspaper. 

Its confidence is again undermined when 
it learns that an " interview " which it has 
read with interest was manufactured; that 
tlie report of the movements and sayings of 
a distinguished stranger was a pure piece of 
ingenious invention ; that a thrilling adven- 
ture alongshore, or in a balloon, or in a horse- 
car, was what is called a sensational article, 
concocted by some brilliant genius, and spun 
out by the yard according to his necessities. 
These reports are entertaining, and often 
more readable than anything else in the 
newspaper; and, if they were put into a 
department with an appropriate heading, 
the public would be less suspicious that all 
the news in the journal was coloured and 
heightened by a lively imagination. 

Intelligent and honest reporting of what- 
ever interests the public is the sound basis 
of all journalism. And yet so careless have 
editors been of all this, that a reporter has 
been sent to attend the sessions of a philo- 

[63] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 



logical convention who had not the least 
linguistic knowledge, having always been 
employed on marine disasters. Another 
reporter, who was assigned to inform the 
public of the results of a difBcult archaeologi- 
cal investigation, frankly confessed his inabil- 
ity to understand what was going on ; for his 
ordinary business, he said, was cattle. A 
story is told of a metropolitan journal, which 
illustrates another difficulty the public has in 
keeping up its confidence in newspaper infal- 
libility. It may not be true for history, but 
answers for an illustration. The annual 
November meteors were expected on a cer- 
tain night. The journal prepared an elabo- 
rate article, several columns in length, on 
meteoric displays in general, and on the dis- 
play of that night in particular, giving in 
detail the appearance of the heavens from 
the metropolitan roofs in various parts of the 
city, the shooting of the meteors amid the 
blazing constellations, the size and times of 
flight of the fiery bodies ; in short, a most 
vivid and scientific account of the lofty fire- 
works. Unfortunately the night was cloudy. 

[ 64 ] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

The article was in type and ready ; but the 
clouds would not break. The last moment 
for going to press arrived : there was a prob- 
ability that the clouds would lift before day- 
lio-ht and the manao-er took the risk. The 
article that appeared was very interesting; 
but its scientific value was impaired by the 
fact that the heavens were obscured the 
whole night, and the meteors, if any arrived, 
were invisible. The reasonable excuse of the 
editor would be that he could not control 
the elements. 

If the reporting department needs strength- 
ening and reduction to order in the Ameri- 
can journal, we may also query whether 
the department of correspondence sustains 
the boast that the American newspaper is the 
best in the world. We have a good deal of 
excellent correspondence, both foreign and 
domestic ; and our " specials " have won dis- 
tinction, at least for liveliness and enterprise. 
I cannot dwell upon this feature; but I sug- 
gest a comparison with the correspondence 
of some of the German, and with that espec- 
ially of the London journals, from the various 
5 [65] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

capitals of Europe, and from the occasional 
seats of war. How surpassing able much of 
it is ! How full of information, of philosophic 
observation, of accurate knowledge! It ap- 
pears to be written by men of trained intellect 
and of experience, — educated men of the 
world, who, by reason of their position and 
character, have access to the highest sources 
of information. 

The editorials of our journals seem to me 
better than formerly, improved in tone, in 
courtesy, in self-respect, — though you may 
not have to go far or search long for the pro- 
vincial note and the easy grace of the fron- 
tier, — and they are better written. This 
is because the newspaper has become more 
profitable, and is able to pay for talent, and 
has attracted to it educated young men. 
There is a sort of editorial ability, of facility, 
of force, that can only be acquired by prac- 
tice and in the newspaper office : no school 
can ever teach it ; but the young editor who 
has a broad basis of general education, of 
information in history, political economy, the 

classics, and polite literature, has an immense 

[66] 



THE AMERICAN NEIVSPAPER 

advantage over the man wlu) has merely 
practical experience. For the editorial, if it 
is to hold its place, must be more and more 
the product of information, culture, and reflec- 
tion, as well as of sagacity and alertness. 
Ignorance of foreign affairs, and of eco- 
nomic science, the American people have in 
times past winked at; but they will not 
always wink at it. 

It is the belief of some shre\vd observers 
that editorials, the long editorials, are not 
much read, except by editors themselves. A 
cynic says, that, if you have a secret you are 
very anxious to keep from the female portion 
of the population, the safest place to put it is 
in an editorial. It seems to me that edito- 
rials are not conned as attentively as they 
once were ; and I am sure they have not so 
much influence as formerly. People are not 
so easily or so visibly led ; that is to say, the 
editorial influence is not so dogmatic and 
direct. The editor does not expect to form 
public opinion so much by arguments and 
appeals as by the news he presents and his 
manner of presenting it, by the iteration of 

[67] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

an idea until it becomes familiar, by the 
reading-matter selected, and by the quota- 
tions of opinions as news, and not professedly 
to influence the reader. And this influence 
is all the more potent because it is indirect, 
and not perceived by the reader. 

There is an editorial tradition — it might 
almost be termed a superstition — - which I 
think will have to be abandoned. It is that 
a certain space in the journal must be filled 
with editorial, and that some of the editorials 
must be long, without any reference to the 
news or the necessity of comment on it, or 
the capacity of the editor at the moment to 
fill the space with original matter that is 
readable. There is the sacred space, and it 
must be filled. The London journals are 
perfect types of this custom. The result is 
often a wearisome page of words and rhetoric. 
It may be good rhetoric ; but life is too short 
for so much of it The necessity of filling 
this space causes the writer, instead of stating 
his idea in the shortest compass in which it 
can be made perspicuous and telling, to beat 

it out thin, and make it cover as much ground 

[68] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the 
economy of room, which our journals will 
more and more be compelled to cultivate, I 
venture to say that this tradition will be set 
aside. I think that we may fairly claim a 
superiority in our journals over the English 
dailies in our habit of making brief, pointed 
editorial paragraphs. They are the life of the 
editorial page. A cultivation of these until 
they are as finished and pregnant as the 
paragraphs of " The London Spectator " and 
" The New-York Nation," the printing of 
long editorials only when the elucidation of 
a subject demands length, and the use of the 
space thus saved for more interesting read- 
ing, is probably the line of our editorial 
evolution. 

To continue the comparison of our jour- 
nals as a class, with the English as a class, 
ours are more lively, also more flippant, and 
less restrained by a sense of responsibility or 
by the laws of libel. We furnish, now and 
again, as good editorial writing for its pur- 
pose ; but it commonly lacks the dignity, the 
thoroughness, the wide sweep and knowledge, 

[69] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

that characterises the best English discussion 
of political and social topics. 

The third department of the newspaper 
is that of miscellaneous reading-matter. 
Whether this is the survival of the period 
when the paper contained little else except 
"selections," and other printed matter was 
scarce, or whether it is only the beginning of 
a development that shall supply the public 
nearly all its literature, I do not know. Far 
as our newspapers have already gone in this 
direction, I am inclined to think that in their 
evolution they must drop this adjunct, and 
print simply the news of the day. Some of 
the leading journals of the world already do 
this. 

In America I am sure the papers are print- 
ing too much miscellaneous reading. The 
perusal of this smattering of everything, 
these scraps of information and snatches of 
literature, this infinite variety and medley, in 
which no subject is adequately treated, is 
distracting and debilitating to the mind. It 
prevents the reading of anything in full, and 
its satisfactory assimilation. It is said that 

[ 70] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

the majority of Americans read nothing ex- 
cept the paper. If they read that thoroughly, 
they have time for nothing else. What is its 
reader to do when his journal thrusts upon 
him every day the amount contained in a 
fair-sized duodecimo volume, and on Sundays 
the amount of two of them ? Granted that 
this miscellaneous hodge-podge is the cream 
of current literature, is it profitable to the 
reader ? Is it a means of anything but super- 
ficial culture and fragmentary information ? 
Besides, it stimulates an unnatural appetite, 
a liking for the striking, the brilliant, the 
sensational only; for our selections from 
current literature are usually the " plums ; " 
and plums are not a wholesome diet for any- 
body. A person accustomed to this finds it 
difficult to sit down patiently to the mastery 
of a book or a subject, to the study of history, 
the perusal of extended biography, or to 
acquire that intellectual development and 
strength which comes from thorough reading 
and reflection. 

The subject has another aspect. Nobody 
chooses his own reading; and a whole com- 

[71] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

munity perusing substantially the same 
material tends to a mental uniformity. The 
editor has the more than royal power of 
selecting the intellectual food of a large pub- 
lic. It is a responsibility infinitely greater 
than that of the compiler of schoolbooks, 
great as that is. The taste of the editor, or 
of some assistant who uses the scissors, is in 
a manner forced upon thousands of people, 
who see little other printed matter than that 
which he gives them. Suppose his taste runs 
to murders and abnormal crimes, and to the 
sensational in literature : what will be the 
moral effect upon a community of reading 
this year after year } 

If this excess of daily miscellany is dele- 
terious to the public, I doubt if it will be, 
in the long run, profitable to the newspaper, 
which has a field broad enough in reporting 
and commenting upon the movement of the 
world, without attempting to absorb the 
whole reading field. 

I should like to say a word, if time per- 
mitted, upon the form of the journal, and 
about advertisements. I look to see adver- 

[ 73 3 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

tisements shorter, printed with less display, 
and more numerous. In addition to the 
use now made of the newspaper by the 
classes called " advertisers," I expect it to 
become the handy medium of the entire 
public, the means of ready communication 
in regard to all wants and exchanges. 

Several years ago, the attention of the 
publishers of American newspapers was 
called to the convenient form of certain 
daily journals in South Germany, which 
were made up in small pages, the number 
of which varied from day to day, according 
to the pressure of news or of advertisements. 
The suggestion as to form has been adopted 
by many of our religious, literary, and special 
weeklies, to the great convenience of the 
readers, and I doubt not of the publishers 
also. Nothing is more unwieldly than our 
big blanket-sheets : they are awkward to 
handle, inconvenient to read, unhandy to 
bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify 
matter in them. In dull seasons they are 
too large ; in times of brisk advertising, and 
in the sudden access of important news, 

[73] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

they are too small. To enlarge them for the 
occasion, resort is had to a troublesome fly- 
sheet, or, if they are doubled, there is more 
space to be filled than is needed. It seems 
to me that the inevitable remedy is a news- 
paper of small pages or forms, indefinite in 
number, that can at any hour be increased 
or diminished according to necessity, to be 
folded, stitched, and cut by machinery. 

We have thus rapidly run over a pro- 
lific field, touching only upon some of the 
relations of the newspaper to our civilisation, 
and omitting many of the more important 
and grave. The truth is that the develop- 
ment of the modern journal has been so 
sudden and marvellous, that its conductors 
find themselves in possession of a machine 
that they scarcely know how to manage or 
direct. The change in the newspaper caused 
by the telegraph, the cable, and by a public 
demand for news created by wars, by dis- 
coveries, and by a new outburst of the spirit 
of doubt and inquiry, is enormous. The pub- 
lic mind is confused about it, and alter- 
nately over-estimates and under-estimates 

[74] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

the press, failing to see how integral and 
representative a part it is of modern life. 
" The power of the press," as something 
to be feared or admired, is a favourite theme 
of dinner-table orators and clergymen. One 
would think it was some compactly wielded 
energy, like that of an organised religious 
order, with a possible danger in it to the 
public welfare. Discrimination is not made 
between the power of the printed word — 
which is limitless — and the influence that 
a newspaper, as such, exerts. The power of 
the press is in its facility for making public 
opinions and events. I should say it is a 
medium of force rather than force itself. I 
confess that I am oftener impressed with the 
powerlessness of the press than otherwise, 
its slight influence in bringing about any 
reform, or in inducing the public to do what 
is for its own good and what it is disinclined 
to do. Talk about the power of the press, 
say, in a legislature, when once the members 
are suspicious that somebody is trying to 
influence them, and see how the press will 
retire, with what grace it can, before an in- 

[75] 



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 

vincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the 
combination of the press for any improper 
purpose, or long for any proper purpose, 
is chimerical. Whomever the newspapers 
agree with, they do not agree with each 
other. The public itself never takes so 
many conflicting views of any topic or event 
as the ingenious rival journals are certain to 
discover. It is impossible, in their nature, 
for them to combine. I should as soon ex- 
pect agreement among doctors in their em- 
pirical profession. And there is scarcely 
ever a cause, or an opinion, or a man, that 
does not get somewhere in the press a 
hearer and a defender. 

We will drop the subject with one remark 
for the benefit of whom it may concern. 
With all its faults, I believe the moral tone 
of the American newspaper is higher, as a 
rule, than that of the community in which 
it is published. 



[76] 



Certain Diversities 
of American Life 

THIS is a very interesting age. 
Within the memory of men not 
yet come to middle life the time 
of the trotting horse has been reduced from 
two minutes forty seconds to two minutes 
eight and a quarter seconds. During the 
past fifteen years a universal and wholesome 
pastime of boys has been developed into a 
great national industry, thoroughly organised 
and almost altogether relegated to profes- 
sional hands, no longer the exercise of the 
million but a spectacle for the million, and a 
game which rivals the Stock Exchange as 
a means of winning money on the difference 
of opinion as to the skill of contending 
operators. 

The newspapers of the country — pretty 
accurate and sad indicators of the popular 
taste — devote more daily columns in a 
week's time to chronicling the news about 

[77] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

base-ball than to any other topic that in- 
terests the American mind, and the most 
skilful player, the pitcher, often college 
bred, whose entire prowess is devoted to not 
doing what he seems to be doing, and who 
has become the hero of the American girl as 
the Olympian wrestler was of the Greek 
maiden and as the matador is of the Spanish 
senorita, receives a larger salary for a few 
hours' exertion each week than any college 
president is paid for a year's intellectual toil. 
Such has been the progress in the interest 
in education during this period that the 
larger bulk of the news, and that most looked 
for, printed about the colleges and univer- 
sities, is that relating to the training, the 
prospects and achievements of the boat crews 
and the teams of base-ball and foot-ball, and 
the victory of any crew or team is a better 
means of attracting students to its college, 
a better advertisement, than success in any 
scholastic contest. A few years ago a tour- 
nament was organized in the north between 
several colleges for competition in oratory 

and scholarship; it had a couple of contests 

[78] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

and then died of inanition and want of public 
interest. 

During the period I am speaking of there 
has been an enormous advance in technical 
education, resulting in the establishment of 
splendid special schools, essential to the de- 
velopment of our national resources ; a 
growth of the popular idea that education 
should be practical, — that is, such an educa- 
tion as can be immediately applied to earn- 
ing a living and acquiring wealth speedily, 
— and an increasing extension of the elective 
system in colleges, — based almost solely on 
the notion, having in view, of course, the 
practical education, that the inclinations of 
a young man of eighteen are a better guide 
as to w^hat is best for his mental development 
and equipment for life than all the experience 
of his predecessors. 

In this period, which you will note is more 
distinguished by the desire for the accumu- 
lation of money than for the general produc- 
tion of wealth, the standard of a fortune has 
shifted from a fair competence to that of 
millions of money, so that he is no longer 

[79] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

rich vv^ho has a hundred thousand dollars, but 
he only who possesses property valued at 
many millions, and the men most widely 
known the country through, most talked 
about, whose doings and sayings are most 
chronicled in the journals, whose example 
is most attractive and stimulating to the 
minds of youth, are not the scholars, the 
scientists, the men of letters, not even the 
orators and statesmen, but those who, by 
any means, have amassed enormous for- 
tunes. We judge the future of a generation 
by its ideals. 

Regarding education from the point of 
view of its equipment of a man to make 
money, and enjoy the luxury which money 
can command, it must be more and more 
practical, that is, it must be adapted not even 
to the higher aim of increasing the general 
wealth of the world, by increasing produc- 
tion and diminishing waste both of labour 
and capital, but to the lower aim of getting 
personal possession of it ; so that a striking 
social feature of the period is that one half — 

that is hardly an overestimate — one half 

[803 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

of the activity in America of which we speak 
with so much enthusiasm, is not directed to 
the production of w^ealth, to increasing its 
volume, but to getting the money of other 
people away from them. In barbarous ages 
this object was accomplished by violence ; it 
is now attained by skill and adroitness. We 
still punish those who gain property by vio- 
lence ; those who get it by smartness and 
cleverness, \ve try to imitate, and sometimes 
we reward them with public office. 

It appears, therefore, that speed, —the abil- 
ity to move rapidly from place to place, — 
a disproportionate reward of physical over 
intellectual science, an intense desire to be 
rich, w4iich is strong enough to compel 
even education to grind in the mill of the 
Philistines, and an inordinate elevation in 
public consideration of rich men simply be- 
cause they are rich, are characteristics of this 
little point of time on which we stand. They 
are not the only characteristics ; in a reason- 
ably optimistic view, the age is distinguished 
for unexampled achievements, and for oppor- 
tunities for the well-being of humanity never 

6 [8i] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

before In all history attainable. But these 
characteristics are so prominent as to beget 
the fear that we are losing the sense of the 
relative value of things in this life. 

Few persons come to middle life without 
some conception of these relative values. It 
is in the heat and struggle that we fail to 
appreciate what in the attainment will be 
most satisfactory to us. After it is over we 
are apt to see that our possessions do not 
bring the happiness we expected; or that 
we have neglected to cultivate the powers 
and tastes that can make life enjoyable. We 
come to know, to use a truism, that a person's 
highest satisfaction depends not upon his ex- 
terior acquisitions, but upon what he himself 
is. There is no escape from this conclusion. 
The physical satisfactions are limited and 
fallacious, the intellectual and moral satisfac- 
tions are unlimited. In the last analysis, a 
man has to live with himself, to be his own 
companion, and in the last resort the ques- 
tion is, what can he get out of himself. In 
the end, his life is worth just what he has 
become. And I need not say that the mis- 

L" 82 ] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

take commonly made is as to relative values, 
— that the tilings of sense are as important 
as the things of the mind. You make that 
mistake when you devote your best energies 
to your possession of material substance, and 
neglect the enlargement, the training, the 
enrichment of the mind. You make the 
same mistake in a less degree, when you 
bend to the popular ignorance and conceit 
so far as to direct your college education to 
sordid ends. The certain end of yielding to 
this so-called practical spirit was expressed 
by a member of a northern state legislature 
who said, " We don't want colleges, we want 
workshops." It was expressed in another 
way by a representative of the lower house 
in Washino;ton who said, " The averag:e isfno- 
ranee of the country has a right to be repre- 
sented here." It is not for me to say whether 
it is represented there. 

Naturally, I say, we ought by the time of 
middle life to come to a conception of what 
sort of things are of most value. By anal- 
ogy, in the continual growth of the Republic, 
we ought to have a perception of what we 

[S3] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

have accomplished and acquired, and some 
clear view of our tendencies. We take justi- 
fiable pride in the glittering figures of our 
extension of territory, our numerical growth, 
in the increase of wealth, and in our rise to 
the potential position of almost the first na- 
tion in the world. A more pertinent inquiry 
is, what sort of people have we become ? 
What are we intellectually and morally.? 
For after all the man is the thing, the pro- 
duction of the right sort of men and women 
is all that gives a nation value. When I read 
of the establishment of a great industrial 
centre in which twenty thousand people are 
employed in the increase of the amount of 
steel in the world, before I decide whether 
it would be a good thing for the Republic 
to create another industrial city of the same 
sort, I want to know what sort of people 
the twenty thousand are, how they live, what 
their morals are, what intellectual life they 
have, what their enjoyment of life is, what 
they talk about and think about, and what 
chance they have of getting into any higher 
life. It does not seem to me a sufficient gain 

[84] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 



in this situation that wc arc immensely in- 
creasing the amount of steel in the world, 
or that twenty more people arc enabled on 
account of this to indulge in an unexampled, 
unintellectual luxury. We want more steel, 
no doubt, but have n't we wit enough to get 
that and at the same time to increase among 
the producers of it the number of men and 
women w^iose horizons are extended, who 
are companionable, intelligent beings, adding 
somethino: to the intellectual and moral force 
upon which the real progress of the Republic 
depends ? 

There is no place where I would choose 
to speak more plainly of our national situa- 
tion to-day than in the south, and at the 
University of the South; in the south, be- 
cause it is more plainly in a transition state, 
and at the University of the South, because 
it is here and in similar institutions that the 
question of the higher or low^er plane of life 
in the south is to be determined. 

To a philosophical observer of the Repub- 
lic, at the end of the hundred years, I should 
say that the important facts are not its in- 

[85] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

dustrial energy, its wealth, or its popula- 
tion, but the stability of the federal power, 
and the integrity of the individual States. 
That is to say, that stress and trial have 
welded us into an indestructible nation ; and 
not of less consequence is the fact that 
the life of the Union is in the life of the 
States. The next most encouraging augury 
for a great future is the marvellous diver- 
sity among the members of this republican 
body. If nothing would be more speedily 
fatal to our plan of government than in- 
creasing centralisation, nothing would be 
more hopeless in our development than in- 
creasing monotony, the certain end of which 
is mediocrity. 

Speaking as one whose highest pride it is 
to be a citizen of a great and invincible Re- 
public to those whose minds kindle with a 
like patriotism, I can say that I am glad 
there are East and North and South, and 
West, Middle, Northwest and Southwest, 
with as many diversities of climate, tempera- 
ment, habits, idiosyncracies, genius, as these 

names imply. Thank Heaven we are not all 

[86] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

alike ; and so long as we have a common 
purpose in the Union, and mutual toleration, 
respect, and sympathy, the greater will be 
our achievement and the nobler our total 
development, if every section is true to the 
evolution of its local traits. The superficial 
foreiofn observer finds sameness in our differ- 
ent States, tiresome family likeness in our 
cities, hideous monotony in our villages, and 
a certain common atmosphere of life, which 
increasing facility of communication tends 
to increase. This is a view from a railway 
train. But as soon as you observe closely, 
you find in each city a peculiar physiognomy, 
and a peculiar spirit remarkable considering 
the freedom of movement and intercourse, 
and you find the organised action of each 
State S2ii generis to a degree surprising con- 
sidering the general similarity of our laws 
and institutions. In each section differences 
of speech, of habits of thought, of tem- 
perament prevail. Massachusetts is unlike 
Louisiana, Florida unlike Tennessee, Georgia 
is unlike California, Pennsylvania is unlike 
Minnesota, and so on, and the unlikeness is 

[87] 



CERTAIN DIVERS ir lES 

not alone or chiefly in physical features. By 
the different style of living I can tell when I 
cross the line between Connecticut and New 
York as certainly as when I cross the line 
between Vermont and Canada. The Vir- 
ginian expanded in Kentucky is not the 
same man he was at home, and the New 
England Yankee let loose in the west takes 
on proportions that would astonish his grand- 
father. Everywhere there is variety in local 
sentiment, action, and development. Sit 
down in the seats of the State governments 
and study the methods of treatment of es- 
sentially the common institutions of govern- 
ment, of charity and discipline, and you will 
be impressed with the variety of local spirit 
and performance in the Union. And this 
diversity is so important, this contribution 
of diverse elements is so necessary to the 
complex strength and prosperity of the 
whole, that one must view with alarm all 
federal interference and tendency to greater 
centralisation. 

And not less to be dreaded than monot- 
ony from the governmental point of view, is 

[88] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

the obliteration of variety in social life and 
in literary development. It is not enough 
for a nation to be great and strong, it must 
be interesting:, and interestincr it cannot be 
without cultivation of local variety. Better 
obtrusive peculiarities than universal same- 
ness. It is out of variety as well as complexity 
in American life, and not in homogeneity 
and imitation, that we are to expect a civili- 
sation noteworthy in the progress of the 
hum.an race. 

Let us come a little closer to our subject 
in details. For a hundred years the south 
was developed on its own lines, with aston- 
ishingly little exterior bias. This compara- 
tive isolation was due partly to the institu- 
tion of slavery, partly to devotion to the 
production of two or three great staples. 
While its commercial connection with the 
north was intimate and vital, its literary 
relation with the north was slight. With 
few exceptions northern authors were not 
read in the south, and the literary move- 
ment of its neighbours, such as it was, from 
1820 to i860, scarcely affected it. With the 

[89] 



C ER TAIN DIFERSITIES 

exception of Louisiana, which was absolutely 
ignorant of American literature and drew its 
inspiration and assumed its critical point of 
view almost wholly from the French, the 
south was English, but mainly English of 
the time of Walter Scott and George the 
Third. While Scott was read at the north 
for his knowledge of human nature, as he 
always will be read, the chivalric age which 
moves in his pages was taken more seriously 
at the south, as if it were of continuing 
importance in life. In any of its rich private 
libraries you find yourself in the age of Pope 
and Dryden, and the classics were pursued 
in the spirit of Oxford and Cambridge in 
the time of Johnson. It was little disturbed 
by the intellectual and ethical agitation of 
modern England or of modern New Eng- 
land. During this period, while the south 
excelled in the production of statesmen, ora- 
tors, trained politicians, great judges, and 
brilliant lawyers, it produced almost no 
literature, that is, no indigenous literature, 
except a few poems and a few humorous 
character-sketches ; its general writing was 

[90] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

ornately classic, and its fiction romantic on 
the lines of the foreign romances. 

From this isolation one thins: was de- 
veloped, and another thing might in due 
time be expected. The thing developed was 
a social life, in the favoured class, which has 
an almost unique charm, a power of being 
agreeable, a sympathetic cordiality, an im- 
pulsive warmth, a frankness in the expres- 
sion of emotion, and that delightful quality 
of manner which puts the world at ease and 
makes life pleasant. The southerners are no 
more sincere than the northerners, but they 
have less reserve, and in the social traits that 
charm all who come in contact with them, 
they have an element of immense value in 
the variety of American life. 

The thing that might have been expected 
in due time, and when the call came — and 
it is curious to note that the call and cause 
of any renaissance are always from the out- 
side — was a literary expression fresh and 
indigenous. This expectation, in a brief 
period since the war, has been realised by a 
remarkable performance and is now stimu- 

[91] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

lated by a remarkable promise. The acclaim 
with which the southern literature has been 
received is partly due to its novelty, the new 
life it exhibited, but more to the recognition 
in it of a fresh flavour, a literary quality dis- 
tinctly original and of permanent impor- 
tance. This production, the first fruits of 
which are so engaging in quality, cannot 
grow and broaden into a stable, varied litera- 
ture without scholarship and hard work, and 
without a sympathetic local audience. But 
the momentary concern is that it should de- 
velop on its own lines and in its own spirit, 
and not under the influence of London or 
Boston or New York. I do not mean by 
this that it should continue to attract atten- 
tion by peculiarities of dialect — which is 
only an incidental, temporary phenomenon, 
that speedily becomes wearisome, whether 
"cracker" or negro or Yankee — but by 
being true to the essential spirit and tem- 
perament of southern life. 

During this period there was at the north, 
and especially in the east, great intellectual 
activity and agitation, and agitation ethical 

[90 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

and moral as well as intellectual. There 
was awakening, investigation, questioning, 
doubt. There was a great deal of froth 
thrown to tlie surface. In the free action of 
individual tliought and expression grew 
eccentricities of belief and of practice, and a 
crop of so-called " isms," more or less tem- 
porary, unprofitable, and pernicious. Public 
opinion attained an astonishing degree of 
freedom, — I never heard of any community 
that was altogether free of its tyranny. At 
least extraordinary latitude was permitted in 
the development of extreme ideas, new, fan- 
tastic, radical, or conservative. For instance, 
slavery was attacked and slavery was de- 
fended on the same platform, with almost 
equal freedom. Indeed, for many years, if 
there was any exception to the general toler- 
ation it was in the social ostracism of those 
who held and expressed extreme opinions in 
regard to immediate emancipation, and were 
stigmatised as abolitionists. There was a 
general ferment of new ideas, not always 
fruitful in the direction taken, but hopeful 
in view of the fact that growth and move- 

[93] 



C ER TAIN DIVERSITIES 

ment are better than stagnation and decay. 
You can do something with a ship that has 
headway ; it will drift upon the rocks if it 
has not. With much foam and froth, sure 
to attend agitation, there was immense vital 
energy, intense life. 

Out of this stir and agitation came the 
aggressive, conquering spirit that carried 
civilisation straight across the continent, 
that built up cities and States, that de- 
veloped wealth, and by invention, ingenuity, 
and energy performed miracles in the way 
of the subjugation of nature and the assimi- 
lation of societies. Out of this free agitation 
sprang a literary product, great in quantity 
and to some degree distinguished in quality, 
groups of historians, poets, novelists, es- 
sayists, biographers, scientific writers. A 
conspicuous agency of the period was the 
lecture platform, which did something in the 
spread and popularisation of information, 
but much more in the stimulation of in- 
dependent thought and the awakening of 
the mind to use its own powers. 

Along with this and out of this went on 

[ 94 ] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

the movement of popular education and of 
the high and specialised education. More 
remarkable than the achievements of the 
common schools has been the development 
of the colleges, both in the departments of 
the humanities and of science. If I were 
writing of education generally, I might have 
something to say of the measurable dis- 
appointment of the results of the common 
schools as at present conducted, both as to 
the diffusion of information and as to the 
discipline of the mind and the inculcation of 
ethical principles ; which simply means that 
they need improvement. But the higher 
education has been transformed, and mainly 
by the application of scientific methods, and 
of the philosophic spirit, to the study of 
history, economics, and the classics. When 
we are called to defend the pursuit of meta- 
physics or the study of the classics, either as 
indispensable to the discipline or to the en- 
largement of the mind, we are not called on 
to defend the methods of a oreneration ao^o. 
The study of Greek is no longer an exercise 
in the study of linguistics or the inspection 

[95] 



CERTAIN DIFERSir lES 

of specimens of an obsolete literature, but 
the acquaintance with historic thought, 
habits, and polity, with a portion of the con- 
tinuous history of the human mind, which 
has a vital relation to our own life. 

However much or little there may be of 
permanent value in the vast production of 
northern literature, judged by continental or 
even English standards, the time has come 
when American scholarship in science, in 
language, in occidental or oriental letters, 
in philosophic and historical methods, can 
court comparison with any other. In some 
branches of research the peers of our scholars 
must be sought not in England but in Ger= 
many. So that in one of the best fruits of a 
period of intellectual agitation, scholarship, 
the restless movement has thoroughly vindi- 
cated itself. 

I have called your attention to this move- 
ment in order to say that it was neither 
accidental nor isolated. It was in the his- 
toric line, it was fed and stimulated by all 
that had gone before, and by all contempo- 
rary activity everywhere. New England, for 

[96] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

instance, was alert and progressive because it 
kept its doors and windows open. It was 
hospitable in its intellectual freedom, both of 
trial and debate, to new ideas. It was in 
touch with the universal movement of human- 
ity and of human thought and speculation. 
You lose some quiet by this attitude, some 
repose that is pleasant and even desirable 
perhaps, you entertain many errors, you may 
try many useless experiments, but you gain 
life and are in the way of better things. New 
England, whatever else we may say about 
it, was in the world. There was no stir of 
thought, of investigation, of research, of the 
recasting of old ideas into new forms of life, 
in Germany, in France, in Ital}^ in England, 
anywhere, that did not touch it and to which 
it did not respond with the sympathy that 
common humanity has in the universal 
progress. It kept this touch not only in the 
evolution and expression of thought and emo- 
tion which we call literature (whether original 
or imitative), but in the application of philo- 
sophic methods to education, in the attempted 
regeneration of society and the amelioration 

7 [97] 



CERTAIN DIFERSITIES 

of its conditions by schemes of reform and 
discipline, relating to the institutions of 
benevolence and to the control of the 
vicious and criminal. With all these efforts 
go along always much false sentimentality 
and pseudo-philanthropy, but little by little 
gain is made that could not be made in a 
state of isolation and stagnation. 

In fact there is one historic stream of 
human thought, aspiration, and progress; it 
is practically continuous, and with all its 
diversity of local colour and movement it is a 
unit. If you are in it, you move; if you are 
out of it, you are in an eddy. The eddy may 
have a provincial current, but it is not in the 
great stream, and when it has gone round 
and round for a century, it is still an eddy, 
and will not carry you anywhere in particu- 
lar. The value of the modern method of 
teaching and study is that it teaches the 
solidarity of human history, the continuance 
of human thought, in literature, government, 
philosophy, the unity of the divine purpose, 
and that nothing that has anywhere befallen 

the human race is alien to us. 

[ 98 ] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

I am not undervaluing i\\c part, tlic impor- 
tant part, played by conservatism, the con- 
servatism that holds on to what has been 
gained if it is good, that insists on discipline 
and heed to the plain teaching of experience, 
that refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm 
over every flighty suggestion, or to follow 
every leader simply because he proposes 
something new and strange — I do not mean 
the conservatism that refuses to try anything 
simply because it is new, and prefers to ener- 
getic life the stagnation that inevitably leads 
to decay. Isolation from the great historic 
stream of thought and agitation is stagna- 
tion. While this is true, and always has 
been true in history, it is also true, in regard 
to the beneficent diversity of American life, 
which is composed of so many elements and 
forces, as I have often thought and said, that 
what has been called the southern conserva- 
tism in respect to beliefs and certain social 
problems, may have a very important part to 
play in the development of the life of the 
Republic. 

I shall not be misunderstood here, where 

ILofC. [99] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

the claims of the higher life are insisted on 
and the necessity of pure, accurate scholar- 
ship is recognised, in saying that this expec- 
tation in regard to the south, depends upon 
the cultivation and diffusion of the highest 
scholarship in all its historic consciousness 
and critical precision. This sort of scholar- 
ship, of widely apprehending intellectual 
activity, keeping step with modern ideas so 
far as they are historically grounded, is of the 
first importance. Everywhere indeed, in our 
industrial age, in a society inclined to mate- 
rialism, scholarship, pure and simple scholar- 
ship for its own sake, no less in Ohio than in 
Tennessee, is the thing to be insisted on. 
If I may refer to an institution, which used 
to be midway between the north and the 
south, and which I may speak of without 
suspicion of bias, an institution where the 
studies of metaphysics, the philosophy of his- 
tory, the classics and pure science are as 
much insisted on as the study of applied 
sciences, the College of New Jersey at 
Princeton, the question in regard to a candi- 
date for a professorship or instructorship, is 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

not whether he was born nortli or south, 
whether he served in one army or another or 
in neither, whether he is a Democrat or a 
RepubHcan or a Mugwump, what rehgious 
denomination he belongs to, but is he a 
scholar and has he a high character? There 
is no provincialism in scholarship. 

We are not now considering the matter of 
the agreeableness of one society or another, 
whether life is on the whole pleasanter in 
certain conditions at the north or at the south, 
whether there is not a charm sometimes in 
isolation and even in provincialism. It is a 
fair question to ask, what effect upon individ- 
ual lives and character is produced by an 
industrial and commercial spirit, and by one 
less restless and more domestic. But the 
south is now face to face with certain prob- 
lems which relate her, inevitably, to the mov- 
ino- forces of the world. One of these is the 
development of her natural resources and 
the change and diversity of her industries. 
On the industrial side there is pressing need 
of institutions of technology, of schools of 
applied science, for the diffusion of technical 

[lOl] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

information and skill in regard to mining and 
manufacturing, and also to agriculture, so 
that worn-out lands may be reclaimed and 
good lands be kept up to the highest point 
of production. Neither mines, forests, quar- 
ries, water-ways, nor textile fabrics can be 
handled to best advantage without scientific 
knowledge and skilled labour. The south is 
everywhere demanding these aids to her 
industrial development. But just in the pro- 
portion that she gets them, and because she 
has them, will be the need of higher educa- 
tion. The only safety against the influence 
of a rolling mill is a college, the only safety 
against the practical and materialising ten- 
dency of an industrial school is the increased 
study of whatever contributes to the higher 
and non-sordid life of the mind. The south 
would make a poor exchange for her former 
condition in any amount of industrial suc- 
cess without a corresponding development of 
the highest intellectual life. 

But, besides the industrial problem, there 
is the race problem. It is the most serious 
in the conditions under which it is presented 

[ I02 J 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

that ever in all history confronted a free 
people. Whichever way you regard it, it 
is the nearest insoluble. Under the Con- 
stitution it is wisely left to the action of 
the individual States. The heavy responsi- 
bility is with them. In the nature of things 
it is a matter of the deepest concern to the 
whole Republic, for the prosperity of every 
part is vital to the prosperity of the whole. 
In working it out you are entitled, from the 
outside, to the most impartial attempt to 
understand its real nature, to the utmost 
patience with the facts of human nature, to 
the most profound and most helpful sym- 
pathy. It is monstrous to me that the 
situation should be made on either side a 
political occasion for private ambition or 
for party ends. 

I would speak of this subject with the 
utmost frankness if I knew what to say. It 
is not much of a confession to say that I 
do not. The more I study it the less I 
know, and those among you who give it 
the most anxious thought are the most per- 
plexed, the subject has so many conflict- 

[ 103 ] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

ing aspects. In the first place there is the 
evolution of an undeveloped race. Every 
race has a right to fair play in the world 
and to make the most of its capacities, and 
to the help of the more favoured in the at- 
tempt. If the suggestion recently made of 
a wholesale migration to Mexico were carried 
out, the south would be relieved in many 
ways, though the labour problem would be a 
serious one for a long time, but the " eleva- 
tion " would be lost sight of or relegated to 
a foreign missionary enterprise ; and as for 
results to the coloured people themselves, 
there is the example of Hayti. If another 
suggestion, that of abandoning certain States 
to this race, were carried out, there is the 
example of Hayti again, and, besides, an 
anomaly introduced into the Republic foreign 
to its traditions, spirit, aspirations, and pro- 
cess of assimilation, alien to the entire his- 
toric movement of the Aryan races, and 
infinitely more dangerous to the idea of the 
Republic than if solid Ireland were dumped 
down in the Mississippi valley as an inde- 
pendent State. 

[ 104] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

On the other hand, there rests upon you 
the responsibility of maintaining a civilisa- 
tion — the civilisation of America, not of 
Hayti or of Guatemala — which we have so 
hardly won. It is neither to be expected 
nor desired that you should be ruled by an 
undeveloped race, ignorant of law, letters, 
history, politics, political economy. There 
is no right anywhere in numbers or un- 
intellisfence to rule intelliorence. It is a 
travesty of civilisation. No northern State 
that I know of would submit to be ruled 
by an undeveloped race. And human nature 
is exactly in the south what it is in the north. 
That is one impregnable fact, to be taken as 
the basis of all our calculations ; the whites 
of the south will not, cannot, be dominated, 
as matters now stand, by the coloured race. 

But, then, there is the suffrage, the uni- 
versal, unqualified suffrage. And here is 
the dilemma. Suffrao-e once 2:iven, cannot 
be suppressed or denied, perverted by chicane 
or bribery without incalculable damage to 
the whole political body. Irregular methods 

once indulged in for one purpose, and to- 

[105] 



CERTAIN DIVERS ir lES 

wards one class, so sap the moral sense that 
they come to be used for all purposes. The 
danger is ultimately as great to those who 
suppress or pervert as it is to the suppressed 
and corrupted. It is the demoralisation of 
all sound political action and life. I know 
whereof I speak. In the north, bribery in 
elections and intimidation are fatal to public 
morality. The legislature elected by bribery 
is a bribable body. 

I believe that the fathers w^ere right in 
making government depend upon the con- 
sent of the governed. I believe there has 
been as yet discovered no other basis of 
government so safe, so stable as popular 
suffrage, but the fathers never contemplated 
a suffrage without intelligence. It is a con- 
tradiction of terms. A proletariat without 
any political rights in a republic is no more 
dangerous than an unintelligent mob which 
can be used in elections by demagogues. 
Universal suffrage is not a universal pana- 
cea ; it may be the best device attainable, 
but it is certain of abuse without safeguards. 
One of the absolutely necessary safeguards 

[io6] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

is an educational qualification. No one ought 
anywhere to exercise it who cannot read and 
write, and if I had my way, no one should 
cast a ballot who had not a fair conception 
of the effect of it, shown by a higher test of 
intelligence tlian the mere fact of ability to 
scrawl his name and to spell out a line or 
two in the Constitution. This much the 
State for its own protection is bound to re- 
quire, for suffrage is an expediency, not 
a right belonging to universal humanity 
regardless of intellio^ence or of character. 

The charge is, with regard to this uni- 
versal suffrage, that you take the fruits of 
increased representation produced by it, and 
then deny it to a portion of the voters whose 
action was expected to produce a different 
political result. I cannot but regard it as 
a blunder in statesmanship to give suffrage 
without an educational qualification, and to 
deem it possible to put ignorance over in- 
telligence. You are not responsible for the 
situation, but you are none the less in an 
illogical position before the law. Now, would 
you not gain more in a rectification of your 

[ 107] 



CERrAIN DIVERSITIES 

position than you would lose in other ways, 
by making suffrage depend upon an educa- 
tional qualification ? I do not mean gain 
party-wise, but in political morals and general 
prosperity. Time would certainly be gained 
by this, and it is possible in this shifting 
world, in the growth of industries and the 
flow of populations, that before the question 
of supremacy was again upon you, foreign 
and industrial immigration would restore 
the race balance. 

We come now to education. The coloured 
race being here, I assume that its education, 
with the probabilities this involves of its 
elevation, is a duty as well as a necessity. 
I speak both of the inherent justice there 
is in giving every human being the chance 
of bettering his condition and increasing his 
happiness that lies in education — unless our 
whole theory of modern life is wrong — and 
also of the political and social danger there 
is in a degraded class numerically strong. 
Granted integral membership in a body poli- 
tic, education is a necessity. I am aware of 

the danger of half education, of that smatter- 

[ io8 ] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

ing of knowledge which only breeds conceit, 
adroitness, and a consciousness of physical 
power, without due responsibility and moral 
restraint. Education makes a race more 
powerful both for evil and for good. I see 
the danger that many apprehend. And the 
outlook, with any amount of education, would 
be hopeless, not only as regards the negro and 
those in neighbourhood relations with him, 
if education should not bring with it thrift, 
sense of responsibility as a citizen, and virtue. 
What the negro race under the most favour- 
able conditions is capable of remains to be 
shown ; history does not help us much to 
determine thus far. It has always been a 
long pull for any race to rise out of primitive 
conditions ; but I am sure for its own sake, 
and for the sake of the republic where it 
dwells, every thoughtful person must desire 
the most speedy intellectual and moral de- 
velopment possible of the African race. And 
I mean as a race. 

Some distinguished English writers have 
suggested, with approval, that the solution of 
the race problem in this country is fusion, 

[ 109 ] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

and I have even heard discouraged south- 
erners accept it as a possibility. The result 
of their observation of the amalgamation of 
races and colours in Egypt, in Syria, and 
Mexico, must be very different from mine. 
When races of different colour mingle there 
is almost invariably loss of physical stamina, 
and the lower moral qualities of each are 
developed in the combination. No race 
that regards its own future would desire it. 
The absorption theory as applied to America 
is, it seems to me, chimericaL 

But to return to education. It should 
always be fitted to the stage of develop- 
ment. It should always mean discipline, the 
training of the powers and capacities. The 
early pioneers who planted civilisation on 
the Watauga, the Holston, the Kentucky, 
the Cumberland, had not much broad learn- 
ing, — they would not have been worse if 
they had had more, — but they had courage, 
they were trained in self-reliance, virile com- 
mon sense, and good judgment, they had 
inherited the instinct and capacity of self- 
government, they were religious, with all 

[no] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

their coarseness they had the fundamental 
elements of nobility, the domestic virtues, 
and the public spirit needed in the founda- 
tion of states. Their education in all the 
manly arts and crafts of the backwoodsman, 
fitted them very well for the work they had 
to do. I should say that the education of 
the coloured race in America should be fun- 
damental. I have not much confidence in 
an ornamental top-dressing of philosophy, 
theology, and classic learning upon the foun- 
dation of an unformed and unstable mental 
and moral condition. Somehow, character 
must be built up, and character depends 
upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, 
upon correct ethical perceptions. To have 
control of one's powers, to have skill in labour, 
so that work in any occupation shall be 
intelligent, to have self-respect, which com- 
monly comes from trained capacity, to know 
how to live, to have a clean, orderly house, to 
be grounded in honesty and the domestic vir- 
tues, — these are the essentials of progress. 
I suppose that the education to produce 

these must be an elemental and practical 

[III] 



CERTAIN DIVERSITIES 

one, one that fits for the duties of life and 
not for some imaginary sphere above them. 

To put it in a word, and not denying that 
there must be schools for teaching the 
teachers, with the understanding that the 
teachers should be able to teach what 
the mass most needs to know — what the 
race needs for its own good to-day, are in- 
dustrial and manual training schools, with 
the varied and practical discipline and arts 
of life which they impart. 

What then } What of the modus vivendi 
of the two races occupying the same soil .f* 
As I said before, I do not know. Providence 
works slowly. Time and patience only solve 
such enigmas. The impossible is not ex- 
pected of man, only that he shall do to-day 
the duty nearest to him. It is easy, you 
say, for an outsider to preach waiting, pa- 
tience, forbearance, sympathy, helpfulness. 
Well, these are the important lessons we 
get out of history. We struggle, and fume, 
and fret, and accomplish little in our brief 
hour, but somehow the world gets on. For- 
tunately for us, we cannot do to-day the 

[112] 



OF AMERICAN LIFE 

work of to-morrow. All the gospel in the 
world can be boiled down into a single pre- 
cept. Do right now. I have observed that 
the boy who starts in the morning w^ith a 
determination to behave himself till bed- 
time, usually gets through the day without 
a thrashing. 

But of one thing I am sure. In the rush 
of industries, in the race problem, it is more 
and more incumbent upon such institutions 
as the University of the South to maintain 
the highest standard of pure scholarship, to 
increase the number of men and women 
devoted to the intellectual life. Long ago, 
in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon, clergyman 
and physician, wrote in his diary : " The 
wealth of a nation depends upon its popu- 
lousness, and its populousness depends upon 
the liberty of conscience that is granted to 
it, for this calls in strangers and promotes 
trading." Great is the attraction of a benign 
climate and of a fruitful soil, but a greater 
attraction is an intelligent people, that 
values the best thino;s in life, a societv 



CERT A IN DIVERSITIES 

hospitable, companionable, instinct with in- 
tellectual life, awake to the great ideas that 
make life interesting. 

As I travel through the south and become 
acquainted with its magnificent resources 
and opportunities, and know better and 
love more the admirable qualities of its 
people, I cannot but muse in a fond prophecy 
upon the brilliant part it is to play in 
the diversified life and the great future of 
the American Republic. But, north and 
south, we have a hard fight with materialis- 
ing tendencies. God bless the University 
of the South ! 



[114] 



The Pilgrim, and the 
American of To-Day 

TPilS December evening, the imagin- 
ation, by a law of contrast, recalls 
another December night two hun- 
dred and seventy years ago. The circle of 
darkness is drawn about a little group of Pil- 
grims who have come ashore on a sandy and 
inhospitable coast. On one side is a vexed 
and wintry sea, three thousand miles of toss- 
ing waves and tempest, beyond which lie the 
home, the hedgerows and cottages, the church 
towers, the libraries and universities, the 
habits and associations of an old civilisation, 
the strongest and dearest ties that can en- 
twine around a human heart, abandoned now 
definitely and forever by these wanderers ; 
on the other side a wintry forest of unknown 
extent, without highways, the lair of wild 
beasts, impenetrable except by trails known 
only to the savages, whose sudden appearance 

[115] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

and disappearance adds mystery and terror 
to the impression the imagination has con- 
jured up of the wilderness. 

This darkness is symbolic. It stands for 
a vaster obscurity. This is an encampment 
on the edge of a continent, the proportions 
of which are unknown, the form of which is 
only conjectured. Behind this screen of 
forest are there hills, great streams, with 
broad valleys, ranges of mountains perhaps, 
vast plains, lakes, other wildernesses of illim- 
itable extent? The adventurers on the 
James hoped they could follow the stream to 
highlands that looked off upon the South 
Sea, a new route to India and the Spice 
Islands. This unknown continent is at- 
tacked, it is true, in more than one place. 
The Dutch are at the mouth of the Hudson; 
there is a London company on the James ; 
the Spaniards have been long in Florida, and 
have carried religion and civilisation into the 
deserts of New Mexico. Nevertheless, the 
continent, vaster and more varied than was 
guessed, is practically undiscovered, un- 
trodden. How inadequate to the subjection 

[ii6] 



AM ERIC AN OF TO-PAT 

of any considerable portion of it seems this 
little band of ill-equipped adventurers, who 
cannot without peril of life stray a league 
from the bay where the " Mayflower " lies. 

It is not to be supposed that the Pilgrims 
had an adequate conception of the continent, 
or of the maofnitude of their mission on it, 
or of the nation to come of which they were 
laying the foundations. They did the duty 
that lay nearest to them ; and the duty done 
to-day, perhaps without prescience of its 
consequences, becomes a permanent stone in 
the edifice of the future. They sought a 
home in a fresh wilderness, where they might 
be undisturbed by superior human authority ; 
they had no doctrinarian notions of equality, 
nor of the inequality which is the only pos- 
sible condition of liberty ; the idea of tolera- 
tion was not born in their age ; they did not 
project a republic ; they established a theoc- 
racy, a church which assumed all the func- 
tions of a state, recognising one Supreme 
Power, whose will in human conduct they 
were to interpret. Already, however, in the 
first moment, with a true instinct of self- 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

government, they drew together In the cabin 
of the " Mayflower " in an association to carry 
out the divine will in society. But, behold 
how speedily their ideas expanded beyond 
the Jewish conception, necessarily expanded 
with opportunity and the practical self- 
dependence of colonies cut off from the aid 
of tradition, and brought face to face with 
the problems of communities left to them- 
selves. Only a few years later, on the banks 
of the Connecticut, Thomas Hooker, the first 
American Democrat, proclaimed that "the 
foundation of authority is laid in the free 
consent of the people," that " the choice of 
public magistrates belongs unto the people, 
by God's own allowance," that it is the right 
of the people not only to choose but to limit 
the power of their rulers, and he exhorted, 
"as God has given us liberty to take it." 
There, at that moment, in Hartford, Ameri- 
can democracy was born ; and in the repub- 
lican union of the three towns of the 
Connecticut colony, Hartford, Windsor, and 
Wethersfield, was the germ of the American 

federal system, which was adopted into the 

[ii8] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

federal constitution and known at the time 
as the "Connecticut Compromise." 

It were not worth while for me to come a 
tliousand miles to say this, or to draw over 
ao^ain for the hundredth time the character 
of the New England Pilgrim, nor to sketch 
his achievement on this continent. But it 
is pertinent to recall his spirit, his attitude 
toward life, and to inquire what he would 
probably do in the circumstances In which 
we find ourselves. 

It is another December night, before the 
dawn of a new year. And this night still 
symbolises the future. You have subdued a 
continent, and it stands in the daylight 
radiant with a material splendour of which the 
Pilgrims never dreamed. Yet a continent 
as dark, as unknown, exists. It is yourselves, 
your future, your national life. The other 
continent was made, you had only to discover 
it, to uncover it. This you must make 
yourselves. 

We have finished the outline sketch of a 
magnificent nation. The territory is ample ; 
it includes every variety of climate, in the 

["9] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

changing seasons, every variety of physical 
conformation, every kind of production 
suited to the wants, almost everything desired 
in the imagination, of man. It comes nearer 
than any empire in history to being self- 
sufficient, physically independent of the rest 
of the globe. That is to say, if it were shut 
off from the rest of the world, it has in itself 
the material for great comfort and civilisation. 
And it has the elements of motion, of agita- 
tion, of life, because the vast territory is fill- 
ing up with a rapidity unexampled in history. 
I am not saying that isolated it could attain 
the highest civilisation, or that if it did touch 
a high one it could long hold it in a living 
growth, cut off from the rest of the world. I 
do not believe it. For no state, however 
large, is sufficient unto itself. No state is 
really alive in the highest sense whose recep- 
tivity is not equal to its power to contribute 
to the world with which its destiny is bound 
up. It is only at its best when it is a part of 
the vital current of movement, of sympathy, 
of hope, of enthusiasm of the world at large. 

There is no doctrine so belittling, so wither- 

[120] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

inor to our national life, as that which con- 
ceives our destiny to be a Hfe of exclusion of 
the affairs and interests of the whole globe, 
hemmed in to the selfish development of our 
material wealth and strength, surrounded by 
a Chinese wall built of strata of prejudice on 
the outside and of ignorance on the inside. 
Fortunately it is a conception impossible to 
be realised. 

There is something captivating to the 
imagination in being a citizen of a great 
nation, one powerful enough to command 
respect everywhere, and so just as not to 
excite fear anywhere. This proud feeling of 
citizenship is a substantial part of a man's 
enjoyment of life ; and there is a certain com- 
pensation for hardships, for privations, for 
self-sacrifice, in the glory of one's own coun- 
try. It is not a delusion that one can afford 
to die for it. But what in the last analysis 
is the object of a government ? What is the 
essential thing, without which even the glory 
of a nation passes into shame, and the vast- 
ness of empire becomes a mockery.^ I wall 
not say that it is the well-being of every in- 

[121] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

dividual, because the term well-being — the 
dien etre of the philosophers of the eigh- 
teenth century — has mainly a materialistic 
interpretation, and may be attained by a com- 
promise of the higher life to comfort, and 
even of patriotism to selfish enjoyment. 

That is the best government in which the 
people, and all the people, get the most out 
of life ; for the object of being in this world 
is not primarily to build up a government, a 
monarchy, an aristocracy, a democracy, or a 
republic, or to make a nation, but to live the 
best sort of life that can be lived. 

We think that our form of government is 
the one best calculated to attain this end. It 
is of all others yet tried in this world the one 
least felt by the people, least felt as an inter- 
ference in the affairs of private life, in opin- 
ion, in conscience, in our freedom to attain 
position, to make money, to move from place 
to place, and to follow any career that is 
open to our ability. In order to maintain 
this freedom of action, this non-interference, 
we are bound to resist centralisation of 
power; for a central power in a republic, 

[ 122 ] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

grasped and administered by bosses, is no 
more tolerable than central power in a des- 
potism, grasped and administered by a hered- 
itary aristocrat. Let us not be deceived by 
names. Government by the consent of the 
people is the best government, but it is not 
government by the people when it is in the 
hands of political bosses, who juggle with the 
theory of majority rule. What republics 
have most to fear is the rule of the boss, 
w^ho is a tyrant without responsibility. He 
makes the nominations, he dickers and trades 
for the elections, and at the end he divides 
the spoils. The operation is more uncertain 
than a horse race, which is not decided by 
the speed of the horses, but by the state of 
the wagers and the manipulation of the 
jockeys. We strike directly at his power for 
mischief when we organise the entire civil 
service of the nation and of the States on 
capacity, integrity, experience, and not on 
political power. 

And if w^e look further, considering the 
danger of concentration of power in irre- 
sponsible hands, we see a new cause for alarm 

[123] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

in undue federal mastery and interference. 
This we can only resist by the constant as- 
sertion of the rights, the power, the dignity 
of the individual State, all that it has not sur- 
rendered in the fundamental constitution of 
the Republic. This means the full weight of 
the State, as a State, as a political unit, in the 
election of President; and the full weight of 
the State, as a State, as a political unit, with- 
out regard to its population, in the senate 
of the United States. The senate, as it 
stands, as it was meant to be in the Consti- 
tution, is the strongest safeguard which the 
fundamental law established against centra- 
lisation, against the tyranny of mere majori- 
ties, against the destruction of liberty, in 
such a diversity of climates and conditions 
as we have in our vast continent. It is not 
a mere check upon hasty legislation ; like 
some second chambers in Europe, it is the 
representative of powers whose preservation 
in their dignity is essential to the preserva- 
tion of the form of our government itself. 
We pursue the same distribution of power 

and responsibility when we pass to the States. 

[ 124] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

The federal government is not to interfere 
in what the State can do and ought to do for 
itself; the State is not to meddle with what 
the county can best do for itself; nor the 
county in the affairs best administered by 
the tow^n and the municipality. And so we 
come to the individual citizen. He cannot 
delegate his responsibility. The government 
even of the smallest community must be, at 
least is, run by parties and by party ma- 
chinery. But if he wants good government, 
he must pay as careful attention to the 
machinery, — call it caucus, primary, conven- 
tion, town-meeting, — as he does to the 
machinery of his owai business. If he 
hands it over to bosses, who make politics 
a trade for their own livelihood, he will find 
himself in the condition of stockholders of 
a bank whose directors are mere dummies, 
when some day the cashier packs the assets 
and goes on a foreign journey for his health. 
When the citizen simply does his duty in the 
place where he stands, the boss will be elim- 
inated, in the nation, in the State, in the town, 
and we shall have, what by courtesy we say 

[125] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

we have now, a government by the people. 
Then all the way down from the capital to 
the city ward, w^e shall have vital popular 
government, free action, discussion, agitation, 
life. What an anomaly it is, that a free 
people, reputed shrewd and intelligent, 
should intrust their most vital interests, 
the making of their laws, the laying of their 
taxes, the spending of their money, even 
their education and the management of their 
public institutions into the keeping of politi- 
cal bosses, whom they would not trust to man- 
age the least of their business affairs, nor to 
arbitrate on what is called a trial of speed at 
an agricultural fair. 

But a good government, the best govern- 
ment is only an opportunity. However vast 
the country may become in wealth and popu- 
lation, it cannot rise in quality above the 
average of the majority of its citizens; and 
its goodness will be tested in history by its 
value to the average man, not by its bigness, 
not by its power, but by its adaptability to 
the people governed, so as to develop the 

best that is in them. It is incidental and 

[126] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

imperative that the country should be an 
agreeable one to live in ; but it must be more 
than that, it must be favourable to the growth 
of the higher life. The Puritan community 
of Massachusetts Bay, whose spirit we may 
happily contrast with that of the Pilgrims 
whose anniversary we celebrate, must have 
been as disagreeable to live in as any that 
history records; not only were the physical 
conditions of life hard, but its inquisitorial 
intolerance overmatched that which it es- 
caped in England. It was a theocratic 
despotism, untempered by recreation or 
amusement, and repressive not only of 
freedom of expression but of freedom of 
thought. But it had an unconquerable will, 
a mighty sense of duty, a faith in God, 
which not only established its grip upon the 
continent but carried its influence from one 
ocean to the other. It did not conquer by 
its bigotry, by its intolerance, its cruel per- 
secuting spirit, but by its higher mental and 
spiritual stamina. These lower and baser 
qualities of the age of the Puritans leave a 

stain upon a great achievement ; it took 

[ 127 ] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

Massachusetts almost two centuries to cast 
them off and come into a wholesome freedom, 
but the vital energy and the recognition of 
the essential verities in human life carried all 
the institutions of the Puritans that were life- 
giving over the continent. 

Here in the west you are near the centre 
of a vast empire, you feel its mighty pulse, 
the throb and heart-beat of its immense and 
growing strength. Some of you have seen 
this great civilisation actually grow on the 
vacant prairies, in the unoccupied wilder- 
ness, on the sandy shores of the inland seas. 
You have seen the trails of the Indian and 
the deer replaced by highways of steel, 
and upon the spots where the first immi- 
grants corralled their wagons, and the voy- 
agers dragged their canoes upon the reedy 
shore, you have seen arise great cities, centres 
of industry, of commerce, of art, attaining in 
a generation the proportions and the world- 
wide fame of cities that were already famous 
before the discovery of America. 

Naturally the country is proud of this 

achievement. Naturally we magnify our ma- 

C 128 ] 



AMERICAN OF T 0-D A T 

terlal prosperity. But in this age of science 
and invention this development may be said 
to be inevitable, and besides it is the neces- 
sary out-let of the energy of a free people. 
There must be growth of cities, extension of 
railways, improvement of agriculture, de- 
velopment of manufactures, amassing of 
wealth, concentration of capital, beautifying 
of homes, splendid public buildings, private 
palaces, luxury, display. Without reservoirs 
of wealth there would be no great univer- 
sities, schools of science, museums, galleries 
of art, libraries, solid institutions of charity, 
and perhaps not the wide diffusion of cul- 
ture which is the avowed aim of modern 
civilisation. 

But this in its kind is an old story. It is 
an experiment that has been repeated over 
and over. History is the record of the rise 
of splendid civilisations, many of which have 
flowered into the most glorious products of 
learning and of art, and have left monuments 
of the proudest material achievements. Ex- 
cept in the rapidity with which steam and 
electricity have enabled us to move to our 

9 [129] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

object, and in the discoveries of science 
which enable us to relieve suffering and 
prolong human life, there is nothing new in 
our experiment. We are pursuing substan- 
tially the old ends of material success and 
display. And the ends are not different 
because we have more people in a nation, 
or bigger cities with taller buildings, or 
more miles of railway, or grow more corn and 
cotton, or make more ploughs and threshing- 
machines, or have a greater variety of pro- 
ducts than any nation ever had before. I 
fancy that a pleased visitor from another 
planet the other day at Chicago, who was 
shown an assembly much larger than ever 
before met under one roof, might have been 
interested to know that it was also the 
wisest, the most cultivated, the most weighty 
in character of any assembly ever gathered 
under one roof. 

Our experiment on this continent was 
intended to be something more than the 
creation of a nation on the old pattern, that 
should become big and strong, and rich and 
luxurious, divided into classes of the very 

[ 130] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

wealthy and the very poor, of the en- 
lightened and the ilHterate. It was intended 
to be a nation in which the welfare of the 
people is the supreme object, and whatever 
its show amono^ nations it fails if it does 
not become this. This welfare is an indi- 
vidual matter, and it means many things. 
It includes in the first place physical com- 
fort for every person willing and deserving 
to be physically comfortable, decent lodging, 
good food, sufficient clothing. It means, in 
the second place, that this shall be an agree- 
able country to live in, by reason of its 
impartial laws, social amenities, and a fair 
chance to enjoy the gifts of nature and 
Providence. And it means, again, the op- 
portunity to develop talents, aptitudes for 
cultivation and enjoyment, in short, freedom 
to make the most possible out of our lives. 
This is what Jefferson meant by the " pur- 
suit of happiness; " it was what the consti- 
tution meant by the " general welfare," and 
what it tried to secure in States, safe-guarded 
enough to secure independence in the play 
of local ambition and home rule, and in a 

[131] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

federal republic strong enough to protect the 
whole from foreign interference. We are in 
no vain chase of an inequality which would 
eliminate all individual initiative, and check 
all progress, by ignoring differences of ca- 
pacity and strength, and rating muscles 
equal to brains. But we are in pursuit of 
equal laws, and a fairer chance of leading 
happy lives than humanity in general ever 
had vet. And this fairer chance would not, 
for instance, permit any man to become a 
millionaire by so manipulating railways that 
the subscribing towns and private stock- 
holders should lose their investments; nor 
would it assume that any Gentile or Jew has 
the right to grow rich by the chance of com- 
pelling poor women to make shirts for six 
cents apiece. The public opinion which 
sustains these deeds is as un-American, and 
as guilty as their doers. While abuses like 
these exist, tolerated by the majority that 
not only make public opinion, but make the 
laws, this is not a government for the people, 
any more than a government of bosses is a 
government by the people. 

[ 132 ] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

The Pilgrims of Plymouth could see no 
way of shaping their lives in accordance with 
the higher law except by separating them- 
selves from the world. We have their prob- 
lem, how to make the most of our lives, but 
the conditions have changed. Ours is an 
age of scientific aggression, fierce competi- 
tion, and the widest toleration. The horizon 
of humanity is enlarged. To live the life 
now is to be no more isolated or separate, 
but to throw ourselves into the crreat move- 
ment of thought, and feeling, and achieve- 
ment. Therefore we are altruists in charity, 
missionaries of humanity, patriots at home. 
Therefore we have a justifiable pride in the 
growth, the wealth, the power of the nation, 
the state, the city. But the stream cannot 
rise above its source. The nation is what 
the majority of its citizens are. It is to 
be judged by the condition of its humblest 
members. We shall gain nothing over other 
experiments in government, although we 
have money enough to buy peace from the 
rest of the world, or arms enough to conquer 
it, although we rear upon our material pros- 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

perity a structure of scientific achievement, 
of art, of literature unparalleled, if the com- 
mon people are not sharers in this great 
prosperity, and are not fuller of hope and 
of the enjoyment of life than common people 
ever were before. 

And we are all common people when it 
comes to that. Whatever the greatness of 
the nation, whatever the accumulation of 
wealth, the worth of the world to us is 
exactly the worth of our individual lives. 
The magnificent opportunity in this Republic 
is that we may make the most possible out 
of our lives, and it will continue only as we 
adhere to the original conception of the 
Republic. Politics without virtue, money- 
making without conscience, may result in 
great splendour, but as such an experiment 
is not new, its end can be predicted. An 
agreeable home for a vast, and a free, and 
a happy people is quite another thing. It 
expects thrift, it expects prosperity, but its 
foundations are in the moral and spiritual 
life. 

Therefore I say that we are still to make 

[134] 



AMERICAN OF TO-DAT 

the continent we have discovered and occu- 
pied, and tliat the scope and quality of our 
national life arc still to be determined. If 
they arc determined not by the narrow 
tenets of the Pilgrims, but by their high 
sense of duty, and of the value of the human 
soul, it will be a nation that will call the 
world up to a higher plane of action than it 
ever attained before, and it will bring in a 
new era of humanity. If they are deter- 
mined by the vulgar successes of a mere 
material civilisation, it is an experiment not 
worth making. It would have been better 
to have left the Indians in possession, to see 
if they could not have evolved out of their 
barbarism some new line of action. 

The Pilgrims were poor, and they built 
their huts on a shore which gave such nig- 
gardly returns for labour that the utmost 
thrift was required to secure the necessaries 
of life. Out of this struggle with nature 
and savage life was no doubt evolved the 
hardihood, the endurance, that builds states 
and wins the favours of fortune. But pov- 
erty is not commonly a nurse of virtue, long 

['35] 



THE PILGRIM, AND THE 

continued, it is a degeneration. It is almost 
as difficult for the very poor man to be 
virtuous as for the very rich man ; and very 
good and very rich at the same time, says 
Socrates, a man cannot be. It is a great 
people that can withstand great prosperity. 
The condition of comfort without extremes 
is that which makes a happy life. I know 
a village of old-fashioned houses and broad 
elm-shaded streets in New England, indeed 
more than one, where no one is inordinately 
rich, and no one is very poor, where paupers 
are so scarce that it is difficult to find bene- 
ficiaries for the small traditionary contribu- 
tion for the church poor ; where the homes 
are centres of intelligence, of interest in 
books, in the news of the world, in the 
church, in the school, in politics ; whence 
go young men and women to the colleges, 
teachers to the illiterate parts of the land, 
missionaries to the city slums. Multiply 
such villages all over the country, and we 
have one of the chief requisites for an ideal 
republic. 

This has been the longing of humanity. 



AMERICAN OF T 0-D A T 

Poets have sung of it; prophets have had 
visions of it ; statesmen have striven for it ; 
patriots have died for it. There must be 
somewhere, sometime, a fruitage of so much 
suffering, so much sacrifice, a land of equal 
laws and equal opportunities, a government 
of all the people for the benefit of all the 
people ; where the conditions of living will 
be so adjusted that every one can make the 
most out of his life, neither waste it in hope- 
less slavery nor in selfish tyranny, where 
poverty and crime will not be hereditary 
generation after generation, where great 
fortunes will not be for vulgar ostentation, 
but for the service of humanity and the 
glory of the state, where the privileges of 
freemen will be so valued that no one will 
be mean enough to sell his vote nor corrupt 
enough to attempt to buy a vote, where the 
truth will at last be recognised, that the 
society is not prosperous when half its 
members are lucky, and half are miserable, 
and that that nation can only be truly great 
that takes its orders from the Great Teacher 
of Humanity. 

C 137 ] 



THE PILGRIM OF TO-DAT 

And, lo ! at last here is a great continent, 
virgin, fertile, a land of sun and shower and 
bloom, discovered, organised into a great 
nation, with a government flexible in a dis- 
tributed home rule, stiff as steel in a central 
power, already rich, already powerful. It is 
a land of promise. The materials are all 
here. Will you repeat the old experiment 
of a material success and a moral and spirit- 
ual failure ? Or will you make it what hu- 
manity has passionately longed for ? Only 
good individual lives can do that. 



[138] 



Nathan Hale 

IN a Memorial Day address at New 
Haven in 1881, the Hon. Richard D. 
Hubbard suggested the erection of a 
statue to Nathan Hale in the State Capitol. 
With the exception of the monument in 
Coventry no memorial of the young hero 
existed. The suggestion was acted on by 
the Hon. E. S. Cleveland, who Introduced 
a resolution In the House of Representatives 
in the session of 1883, appropriating money 
for the purpose. The propriety of this was 
urged before a committee of the Legislature 
by Governor Hubbard, in a speech of char- 
acteristic grace and eloquence, seconded by 
the Hon. Henry C. Robinson and the Hon. 
Stephen W. Kellogg. The Legislature ap- 
propriated the sum of five thousand dollars 
for a statue in bronze, and a committee was 
appointed to procure it. They opened a 
public competition, and, after considerable 
delay, during which the commission was 

[ 139] 



N A r H A N HA L E 

changed by death and by absence, — Indeed 
four successive governors, Hubbard, Waller, 
Harrison and Lounsbury have served on it, 
— the work was awarded to Karl Gerhardt, 
a young sculptor who began his career in 
this city. It was finished in clay, and ac- 
cepted in October, 1886, put in plaster, and 
immediately sent to the foundery of Melzar 
Masman in Chicopee, Massachusetts. 

To-day in all its artistic perfection and 
beauty it stands here to be revealed to the 
public gaze. It is proper that the citizens 
of Connecticut should know how much of 
this result they owe to the intelligent zeal 
of Mr. Cleveland, the mover of the resolu- 
tion in the Legislature, who in the commis- 
sion, and before he became a member of it, 
has spared neither time nor effort to procure 
a memorial worthy of the hero and of the 
State. And I am sure that I speak the unan- 
imous sentiment of the commission in the 
regret that the originator of this statue could 
not have seen the consummation of his idea, 
and could not have crowned it with the one 
thing lacking on this occasion, the silver 

[ 140] 



N A r H A N HA L E 

words of eloquence we always heard from 
his lips, that compact, nervous speech, the 
perfect union of strength and grace ; for 
who so fitly as the lamented Hubbard could 
have portrayed the moral heroism of the 
Martyr- Spy? 

This is not a portrait statue. There is 
no likeness of Nathan Hale extant. The 
only known miniature of his face, in the 
possession of the lady to whom he was be- 
trothed at the time of his death, disappeared 
many years ago. The artist was obliged, 
therefore, to create an ideal figure, aided by 
a few fragmentary descriptions of Hale's 
personal appearance. His object has been 
to represent an American youth of the 
period, an American patriot and scholar, 
whose manly beauty and grace tradition 
loves to recall, to represent in face and in 
bearing the moral elevation of character 
that made him conspicuous among his fel- 
lows, and to show forth, if possible, the 
deed that made him immortal. For it is 
the deed and the memorable last words we 
think of when we think of Hale. I know 

[141] 



N A THAN HAL E 

that by one of the canons of art it is held 
that sculpture should rarely fix a momen- 
tary action ; but if this can be pardoned 
in the Laocoon, where suffering could not 
otherwise be depicted to excite the sympathy 
of the spectator, surely it can be justified in 
this case, where, as one may say, the immor- 
tality of the subject rests upon a single act, 
upon a phrase, upon the attitude of the 
moment. For all the man's life, all his 
character, flowered and blossomed into im- 
mortal beauty in this one supreme moment 
of self-sacrifice, triumph, defiance. The lad- 
der of the gallows-tree on which the de- 
serted boy stood, amidst the enemies of his 
country, when he uttered those last words 
which all human annals do not parallel in 
simple patriotism, — the ladder I am sure 
ran up to heaven, and if angels were not seen 
ascending and descending it in that gray 
morning, there stood the embodiment of 
American courage, unconquerable, Ameri- 
can faith, invincible, American love of 
country, unquenchable, a new democratic 

manhood in the world, visible there for 

[ 142 ] 



N A r H A N HA L E 

all men to take note of, crowned already 
with the halo of victory in the Revolu- 
tionary dawn. Oh, my Lord Howe ! it 
seemed a trifling incident to you and to 
your bloodhound, Provost Marshal Cunning- 
ham, but those winged last w^ords were worth 
ten thousand men to the drooping patriot 
army. Oh, your Majesty, King George the 
Third ! here was a spirit, could you but have 
known it, that would cost you an empire, 
here w-as an ignominious death that would 
grow in the estimation of mankind, increas- 
ing in nobility above the fading pageantry 
of kino-s. 

On the 2 1st of April, 1775, a messenger, 
riding express from Boston to New^ York 
wdth the tidings of Lexington and Concord, 
reached New London. The news created 
intense excitement. A public meeting was 
called in the court-house at twilight, and 
among the speakers who exhorted the people 
to take up arms at once, was one, a youth 
not yet twenty years of age, who said, " Let 
us march immediately, and never lay down 
our arms until w^e have obtained our inde- 

[143] 



N A THAN HAL E 

pendence," — one of the first, perhaps the first, 
of the pubHc declarations of the purpose of 
independence. It was Nathan Hale, already 
a person of some note in the colony, of a 
family then not unknown and destined in 
various ways to distinction in the Republic. 
A kinsman of the same name lost his life 
in the Louisburg fight. He had been for 
a year the preceptor of the Union Grammar 
School at New London. The morning after 
the meeting he was enrolled as a volunteer, 
and soon marched away with his company 
to Cambridge. 

Nathan Hale, descended from Robert Hale 
who settled in Charlestown in 1632, a scion 
of the Hales of Kent, England, was born in 
Coventry, Connecticut, on the 6th of June, 
1755, the sixth child of Richard Hale and 
his wife Elizabeth Strong, persons of strong 
intellect and the highest moral character, 
and Puritans of the strictest observances. 
Brought up in this atmosphere, in which 
duty and moral rectitude were the unques- 
tioned obligations in life, he came to man- 
hood with a character that enabled him to 

[ 144 ] 



_ N A r H A N HALE 

face death or obloquy without flinching, when 
duty called, so that his behaviour at the last 
was not an excitement of the moment, but 
the result of ancestry, training, and principle. 
Feeble physically in infancy, he developed 
into a robust boy, strong in mind and body, 
a lively, sweet-tempered, beautiful youth, and 
into a young manhood endowed with every 
admirable quality. In feats of strength and 
agility he recalls the traditions of Washing 
ton ; he early showed a remarkable avidity 
for knowledge, which was so sought that he 
became before he was of age one of the best 
educated young men of his time in the colo- 
nies. He was not only a classical scholar, 
with the limitations of those days; but, what 
was then rare, he made scientific attainments 
which greatly impressed those capable of 
judging, and he had a taste for art and a 
remarkable talent as an artist. His father 
intended him for the ministry. He received 
his preparatory education from Dr. Joseph 
Huntington, a classical scholar and the pastor 
of the church in Coventry, entered Yale Col- 
lege at the age of sixteen, and graduated with 
^° [ 145 ] 



N A THAN HAL E 

high honours in a class of sixty, in September, 
1773. At the time of his graduation his 
personal appearance was notable. Dr. Enos 
Monroe of New Haven, who knew him well 
in the last year at Yale, said of him : — 

** He was almost six feet in height, perfectly 
proportioned, and in figure and deportment he was 
the most manly man I have ever met. His chest 
was broad ; his muscles were firm ; his face wore a 
most benign expression ; his complexion was 
roseate ; his eyes were light blue and beamed with 
intelligence ; his hair was soft and light brown in 
colour, and his speech was rather low, sweet, and 
musical. His personal beauty and grace of man- 
ner were most charming. Why, all the girls in 
New Haven fell in love with him," said Dr. Munro, 
" and wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of 
his sad fate. In dress he was always neat ; he was 
quick to lend a hand to a being in distress, brute 
or human ; was overflowing with good humour, and 
was the idol of all his acquaintances." 

Dr. Jared Sparks, who knew several of 
Hale's intimate friends, writes of him : — 

*• Possessing genius, taste, and order, he became 
distinguished as a scholar; and endowed in an 
eminent degree with those graces and gifts of 
Nature which add a charm to youthful excellence, 

[146] 



N A THAN HALE 

he gained universal esteem and confidence. To 
high moral worth and irreproachable habits were 
joined gentleness of manner, an ingenuous dispo- 
sition, and vigour of understanding. No young man 
of his years put forth a fairer promise of future 
usefulness and celebrity; the fortunes of none were 
fostered more sincerely by the generous good 
wishes of his superiors." 

It was remembered at Yale that he was a 
brilliant debater as well as scholar. At his 
graduation he engaged in a debate on the 
question, " Whether the education of daugh- 
ters be not, without any just reason, more 
neglected than that of the sons." " In this 
debate," wrote James Hillhouse, one of his 
classmates, " he w^as the champion of the 
daughters, and most ably advocated their 
cause. You may be sure that he received 
the plaudits of the ladies present." 

Hale seems to have had an irresistible 
charm for everybody. He w^as a favourite in 
society ; he had the manners and the qualities 
that made him a leader among men and 
gained him the admiration of w^omen. He 
was always intelligently busy, and had the 
Yankee ingenuity, — he " could do anything 

[147] 



N A THAN HAL E 

but spin," he used to say to the girls of Cov- 
entry, laughing over the spinning wheel. 
There is a universal testimony to his alert 
intelligence, vivacity, manliness, sincerity, 
and winningness. 

It is probable that while still an under- 
graduate at Yale, he was engaged to Alice 
Adams, who was born in Canterbury, a young 
lady distinguished then as she was afterwards 
for great beauty and intelligence. After 
Hale's death she married Mr. Eleazer Ripley, 
and was left a widow at the age of eighteen, 
with one child, who survived its father only 
one year. She married, the second time, 
William Lawrence, Esq., of Hartford, and 
died in this city, greatly respected and ad- 
mired, in 1845, aged eighty-eight. It is a 
touching note of the hold the memory of 
her young hero had upon her admiration 
that her last words, murmured as life was 
ebbing, were, " Write to Nathan." 

Hale's short career in the American army 

need not detain us. After his flying visit as 

a volunteer to Cambridge, he returned to 

New London, joined a company with the 

[148] 



N A THAN HA L E 

rank of lieutenant, participated in the siege 
of Boston, was commissioned a captain in 
the Nineteenth Connecticut Regiment in Jan- 
uary, 1776, performed the duties of a soldier 
with vigilance, bravery, and patience, and was 
noted for the discipline of his company. In 
the last dispiriting days of 1775, when the 
terms of his men had expired, he offered to 
give them his month's pay if they would 
remain a month longer. He accompanied 
the army to New York, and shared its for- 
tunes in that discouraging spring and sum- 
mer. Shortly after his arrival Captain Hale 
distinguished himself by the brilliant exploit 
of cutting out a British sloop, laden with 
provisions, from under the guns of the man- 
of-war " Asia," sixty-four, lying in the East 
River, and bringing her triumphantly into 
slip. During the summer he suffered a 
severe illness. 

The condition of the American army and 
cause on the ist of September, 1776, after 
the retreat from Long Island, was critical. 
The army was demoralised, clamouring in 
vain for pay, and deserting by companies 

[ 149 ] 



N A THAN HA L E 

and regiments ; one third of the men were 
without tents, one fourth of them were on 
the sick list. On the 7th, Washington called 
a council of war, and anxiously inquired what 
should be done. On the 12th, it was deter- 
mined to abandon the city, and take posses- 
sion of Harlem Heights. The British army, 
twenty-five thousand strong, admirably 
equipped, and supported by a powerful naval 
force, threatened to envelop our poor force, 
and finish the war in a stroke. Washington 
was unable to penetrate the designs of the 
British commander, or to obtain any trusty 
information of the intentions or the move- 
ments of the British army. Information was 
imperatively necessary to save us from de- 
struction, and it could only be obtained by 
one skilled in military and scientific knowl- 
edge and a good draughtsman, a man of 
quick eye, cool head, tact, sagacity, and 
courage, and one whose judgment and fidelity 
could be trusted. Washington applied to 
Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton, who sum- 
moned a conference of officers in the name 
of the commander-in-chief, and laid the mat- 

[150] 



N AT H A N HA L E 

ter before them. No one was willing to 
undertake the dangerous and ignominious 
mission. Knowlton was in despair, and late 
in the conference was repeating the necessity, 
when a young officer, pale from recent ill- 
ness, entered the room and said, " I will 
undertake it." It was Captain Nathan Hale. 
Everybody was astonished. His friends be- 
sought him not to attempt it. In vain. 
Hale was under no illusion. He silenced 
all remonstrances by saying that he thought 
he owed his country the accomplishment of 
an object so important and so much desired 
by the commander-in-chief, and he knew no 
way to obtain the information except by going 
into the enemy's camp in disguise. " I wish 
to be useful," he said ; " and every kind of 
service necessary for the public good becomes 
honourable by being necessary. If the exi- 
gencies of my country demand a peculiar 
service, its claims to the performance of that 
service are imperious." 

The tale is well known. Hale crossed 
over from Norwalk to Huntington Cove on 
Long Island. In the disguise of a school- 

[151] 



N A THAN HAL E 

master, he penetrated the British lines and 
the city, made accurate drawings of the forti- 
fications, and memoranda in Latin of all that 
he observed, which he concealed between the 
soles of his shoes, and returned to the point 
on the shore where he had first landed. He 
expected to be met by a boat and to cross 
the Sound to Norwalk the next morning. 
The next morning he was captured, no 
doubt by Tory treachery, and taken to 
Howe's headquarters, the mansion of James 
Beekman, situated at (the present) 50th 
Street and First Avenue. That was on the 
2ist of September. Without trial and upon 
the evidence found on his person, Howe con- 
demned him to be hanged as a spy early 
next morning. Indeed Hale made no at- 
tempt at defence. He frankly owned his 
mission, and expressed regret that he could 
not serve his country better. His open, 
manly bearing and high spirit commanded 
the respect of his captors. Mercy he did 
not expect, and pity was not shown him. 
The British were irritated by a conflagration 
which had that morning laid almost a third 



NATHAN HALE 

of the city in ashes, and which they attributed 
to incendiary efforts to deprive them of agree- 
able winter quarters. Hale was at first 
locked up in the Beekman greenhouse. 
Whether he remained there all nio-ht is not 
known, and the place of his execution has 
been disputed; but the best evidence seems to 
be that it took place on the farm of Colonel 
Rutger, on the w^est side, in the orchard in 
the vicinity of the present East Broadway 
and Market Street, and that he was hanged 
to the limb of an apple-tree. 

It was a lovely Sunday morning, before 
the break of day, that he was marched to the 
place of execution, September 22nd. While 
awaiting the necessary preparations, a cour- 
teous young officer permitted him to sit in 
his tent. He asked for the presence of a 
chaplain ; the request was refused. He 
asked for a Bible ; it was denied. But at 
the solicitation of the young officer he was 
furnished with writing materials, and wrote 
briefly to his mother, his sister, and his be- 
trothed. When the infamous Cunningham, 
to whom Howe had delivered him, read what 

['53] 



N A THAN HALE 

was written, he was furious at the noble and 
dauntless spirit shown, and with foul oaths 
tore the letters into shreds, saying afterwards 
" that the rebels should never know that they 
had a man who could die with such firm- 
ness." As Hale stood upon the fatal ladder, 
Cunningham taunted him, and tauntingly 
demanded his "last dying speech and con- 
fession." The hero did not heed the words 
of the brute, but, looking calmly upon the 
spectators, said in a clear voice, " I only 
regret that I have but one life to lose for my 
country." And the ladder was snatched from 
under him. 

My friends, we are not honouring to-day a 
lad who appears for a moment in a heroic 
light, but one of the most worthy of the 
citizens of Connecticut, who has by his lofty 
character long honoured her, wherever patri- 
otism is not a mere name, and where Chris- 
tian manhood is respected. We have had 
many heroes, many youths of promise, and 
men of note, whose names are our only great 
and enduring riches ; but no one of them all 
better illustrated, short as was his career, the 

[154] 



N A THAN HALE 

virtues we desire for all our sons. We have 
long delayed this tribute to his character and 
his deeds, but in spite of our neglect his fame 
has grown year by year, as war and politics 
have taught us what is really admirable in a 
human being, and we are now sure that we 
are not erecting a monument to an ephemeral 
reputation. 

It is fit that it should stand here, one of 
the chief distinctions of our splendid Capitol, 
here in the political centre of the State, here 
in the city where first in all the world was 
proclaimed and put into a political charter 
the fundamental idea of democracy, that 
*' government rests upon the consent of the 
people," here in the city where by the action 
of these self-existing towns was formed the 
model, the town and the commonwealth, the 
bi-cameral legislature, of our constitutional 
federal union. 

If the soul of Nathan Hale, immortal in 
youth in the air of heaven, can behold to-day 
this scene, as doubtless it can, in the midst 
of a State whose prosperity the young colo- 
nist could not have imagined in his wildest 

[155] 



N A THAN HA L E 

dreams for his country, he must feel anew 
the truth that there is nothing too sacred for 
a man to give for his native land. 

Governor Lounsbury, the labour of the 
commission is finished. On their behalf I 
present this work of art to the State of 
Connecticut. 

Let the statue speak for itself. 



C156] 



Some Causes of the 
Prevailinp- Discontent 



THE Declaration of Independence 
opens with the statement of a great 
and fruitful political truth. But if 
it had said: — "We hold these truths to be 
self-evident : that all men are created un- 
equal ; that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that 
among these are life, liberty and the pur- 
suit of happiness," it would also have stated 
the truth ; and if it had added, " All men 
are born in society wdth certain duties which 
cannot be disregarded without danger to the 
social state," it would have laid down a nec- 
essary corollary to the first declaration. 
No doubt those who signed the document 
understood that the second clause limited 
the first, and that men are created equal 
only in respect to certain rights. But the 
first part of the clause has been taken alone 

[157] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

as the statement of a self-evident truth, and 
the attempt to make this unhmited phrase 
a reahty has caused a great deal of misery. 
In connection with the neglect of the idea 
that the recognition of certain duties is as 
important as the recognition of rights in the 
political and social state — that is, in con- 
nection with the doctrine of laissez faire — 
this popular notion of equality is one of the 
most disastrous forces in modern society. 

Doubtless men might have been created 
equal to each other in every respect, with 
the same mental capacity, the same physical 
ability, with like inheritances of good or bad 
qualities, and born into exactly similar con- 
ditions, and not dependent on each other. 
But men never were so created and born, 
so far as we have any record of them, and 
by analogy we have no reason to suppose 
that they ever will be. Inequality is the 
most striking fact in life. Absolute equality 
might be better, but so far as we can see, 
the law of the universe is infinite diversity 
in unity; and variety in condition is the 
essential of what we call progress — it is, in 

[ 158 ] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

fact, life. The great doctrine of the Christian 
era — the brotherhood of man and the duty 
of the strong to tlie weak — is in sharp con- 
trast with this doctrinarian notion of equahty. 
The Christian reHgion never proposed to 
remove the inequahties of hfe or its suffer- 
ing, but by the incoming of charity and 
contentment and a high mind to give in- 
dividual men a power to be superior to 
their conditions. 

It cannot, however, be denied that the 
spirit of Christianity has ameliorated the 
condition of civilised peoples, co-operating 
in this with beneficent inventions. Never 
were the mass of the people so well fed, 
so well clad, so well housed, as to-day in 
the United States. Their ordinary daily 
comforts and privileges were the luxuries 
of a former age, often indeed unknown and 
unattainable to the most fortunate and privi- 
leged classes. Nowhere else is it or was it 
so easy for a man to change his condition, 
to satisfy his wants, nowhere else has he or 
had he such advantages of education, such 
facilities of travel, such an opportunity to 

[159] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

find an environment to suit himself. As a 
rule the mass of mankind have been tied 
to the spot where they were born. A mighty 
change has taken place in regard to liberty, 
freedom of personal action, the possibility 
of coming into contact with varied life and 
an enlarged participation in the bounties of 
nature and the inventions of s^enius. The 
whole world is in motion, and at liberty to 
be so. Everywhere that civilisation has 
gone there is an immense improvement in 
material conditions during the last one 
hundred years. 

And yet men were never so discontented, 
nor did they ever find so many ways of ex- 
pressing their discontent. In view of the 
general amelioration of the conditions of life 
this seems unreasonable and illogical, but it 
may seem less so when we reflect that human 
nature is unchanged, and that which has to 
be satisfied in this world is the mind. And 
there are some exceptions to this general 
material prosperity, in its result to the work- 
ing classes. Manufacturing England is an 

exception. There is nothing so pitiful, so 

[ i6o ] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

hopeless in the record of man, not in the 
Middle Ages, not in rural France just before 
the Revolution, as the physical and mental 
condition of the operators in the great manu- 
facturino; cities and in the vast reekins: slums 
of London. The political economists have 
made England the world's great workshop, 
on the theory that wealth is the greatest 
good in life, and that with the golden streams 
flowing into England from a tributary world, 
wages would rise, food be cheap, employment 
constant. The horrible result to humanity 
is one of the exceptions to the general up- 
lift of the race, not paralleled as yet by any- 
thing in this country, but to be taken note of 
as a possible outcome of any material civili- 
sation, and fit to set us thinking whether 
we have not got on a wrong track. Mr. 
Froude, fresh from a sight of the misery 
of industrial England, and borne straight on 
toward Australia over a vast ocean, through 
calm and storm, by a great steamer, — horses 
of fire yoked to a sea-chariot, — exclaims ; 
" What, after all, have these wonderful 

achievements done to elevate human nature .f* 
II [ i6i ] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

Human nature remains as it was. Science 
grows, but morality is stationary, and art is 
vulgarised. Not here lie the ' things nec- 
essary to salvation,' not the things which 
can give to human life grace, or beauty, or 
dignity." 

In the United States, with its open op- 
portunities, abundant land, where the condi- 
tion of the labouring class is better actually 
and in possibility than it ever was in history, 
and where there is little poverty except that 
which is inevitably the accompaniment of 
human weakness and crime, the prevailing 
discontent seems groundless. But of course 
an agitation so wide-spread, so much in 
earnest, so capable of evoking sacrifice, 
even to the verge of starvation and the risk 
of life, must have some reason in human 
nature. Even an illusion — and men are 
as ready to die for an illusion as for a reality 
— cannot exist without a cause. 

Now, content does not depend so much 

upon a man's actual as his relative condition. 

Often it is not so much what I need, as what 

others have that disturbs me. I should be 

[162 J 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

content to walk from Boston to New York, 
and be a fortnight on the way, if everybody 
else was obliged to walk who made that 
journey. It becomes a hardship when my 
neighbour is whisked over the route in six 
hours and I have to walk. It would still 
be a hardship if he attained the ability to 
go in an hour, when I was only able to 
accomplish the distance in six hours. While 
there has been a tremendous uplift all along 
the line of material conditions, and the 
labouring man who is sober and industrious 
has comforts and privileges in his daily life 
which the rich man who was sober and in- 
dustrious did not enjoy a hundred years ago, 
the relative position of the rich man and the 
poor man has not greatly changed. It is 
true, especially in the United States, that 
the poor have become rich and the rich 
poor, but inequality of condition is about as 
marked as it was before the invention of 
labour-saving machinery, and though work- 
ing men are better off in many ways, the 
accumulation of vast fortunes, acquired often 

in brutal disregard of humanity, marks the 

[163] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

contrast of conditions perhaps more emphat- 
ically than it ever appeared before. That 
this inequality should continue in an era of 
universal education, universal suffrage, uni- 
versal locomotion, universal emancipation 
from nearly all tradition, is a surprise, and 
a perfectly comprehensible cause of discon- 
tent. It is axiomatic that all men are created 
equal. But, somehow, the problem does not 
work out in the desired actual equality of 
conditions. Perhaps it can be forced to the 
right conclusion by violence. 

It ought to be said, as to the United 
States, that a very considerable part of the 
discontent is imported, it is not native, nor 
based on any actual state of things existing 
here. Agitation has become a business. A 
great many men and some women, to whom 
work of any sort is distasteful, live by it. 
Some of them are refugees from military or 
political despotism, some are refugees from 
justice, some from the lowest conditions of 
industrial slavery. When they come here, 
they assume that the hardships they have 

come away to escape exist here, and they 

[164] 



PREFAILING DISCONTENT 

begin asritating against them. Their busi- 
ness is to so mix the real wrongs of our 
social life with imaginary hardships, and to 
heighten the whole with illusory and often 
debasing theories, that discontent will be 
engendered. For it is by means of that only 
that they live. It requires usually a great 
deal of labour, of organisation, of oratory to 
work up this discontent so that it is profit- 
able. The solid working men of America 
who know the value of industry and thrift, 
and have confidence in the relief to be 
obtained from all relievable wrongs by legiti- 
mate political or other sedate action, have no 
time to give to the leadership of agitations 
which require them to quit work, and de- 
stroy industries, and attack the social order 
upon which they depend. The whole case, 
you may remember, was embodied thousands 
of years ago in a parable, which Jotham, 
standing on the top of Mount Gerizim, spoke 
to the men of Shechem : 

'' The trees went forth on a time to anoint 
a king over them ; and they said unto the 

olive-tree, ' Reign thou over us.' 

[165] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

" But the olive-tree said unto them, ' Should 
I leave my fatness wherewith by me they 
honour God and man, and go to be promoted 
over the trees ? ' 

" And the trees said to the fig-tree, * Come 
thou and reign over us.' 

" But the fig-tree said unto them, * Should 
I forsake my sweetness and my good fruit, 
and go to be promoted over the trees ? ' 

" Then said the trees unto the vine, * Come 
thou and reign over us.' 

" And the vine said unto them, ' Should I 
leave my wine, which cheereth God and 
man, and go to be promoted over the 
trees } ' 

"Then said the trees unto the bramble, 
* Come thou and reign over us.' 

" And the bramble said to the trees, * If in 
truth ye anoint me king over you, then come 
and put your trust in my shadow ; and if not, 
let fire come out of the bramble, and devour 
the cedars of Lebanon.' " 

In our day a conflagration of the cedars 

of Lebanon has been the only result of the 

kingship of the bramble. 

[i66] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

In the opinion of many, our universal 
education is one of the chief causes of the 
discontent. This might be true and not be 
an arsfument ajiainst education, for a certain 
amount of discontent is essential to self-de- 
velopment ; and if, as we believe, the develop- 
ment of the best powers of every human 
being is a good in itself, education ought not 
to be held responsible for the evils attending 
a transitional period. Yet we cannot ignore 
the danger, in the present stage, of an 
education that is necessarily superficial, that 
engenders conceit of knowledge and power, 
rather than real knowledge and power, and 
that breeds in two-thirds of those who have 
it a distaste for useful labour. We believe in 
education ; but there must be something 
wrong in an education that sets so many 
people at odds with the facts of life, and, 
above all, does not furnish them with any 
protection against the wildest illusions. 
There is something wanting in the education 
that only half educates people. 

Whether there is the relation of cause and 

effect between the two I do not pretend to 

[167] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

say, but universal and superficial education 
in this country has been accompanied with 
the most extraordinary delusions and the 
evolution of the wildest theories. It is only 
necessary to refer, by way of illustration, to 
the greenback illusion, and to the whole 
group of spiritualistic disturbances and psy- 
chological epidemics. It sometimes seems 
as if half the American people were losing 
the power to apply logical processes to the 
ordinary affairs of life. 

In studying the discontent in this country 
which takes the form of a labour movement, 
one is at first struck by its illogical aspects. 
So far as it is an organised attempt to better 
the condition of men by association of inter- 
ests it is consistent. But it seems strange 
that the doctrine of individualism should so 
speedily have an outcome in a personal 
slavery, only better in the sense that it is 
voluntary, than that which it protested 
against. The revolt from authority, the 
assertion of the right of private judgment, 
has been pushed forward into a socialism 

which destroys individual liberty of action, 

[i68] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

or to a state of anarchy in wliich the weak 
would have no protection. I do not imagine 
that the leaders who preach socialism, who 
live by agitation and not by labour, really 
desire to overturn the social order and brins: 
chaos. If social chaos came, their occupa- 
tion would be gone, for if all men were re- 
duced to a level, they would be compelled to 
scratch about with the rest for a living. 
They live by agitation, and they are con- 
fident that government will be strong enough 
to hold things together, so that they can 
continue agitation. 

The strange thing is that their followers 
who live by labour and expect to live by it, 
and believe in the doctrine of individualism, 
and love liberty of action, should be walling 
to surrender their discretion to an arbitrary 
committee, and should expect that liberty of 
action would be preserved if all property 
were handed over to the state, which should 
undertake to regulate every man's time, 
occupation, wages, and so on. The central 
committee or authority, or whatever it might 

be called, would be an extraordinary des- 

L169] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

potism, tempered only by the idea that it 
could be overturned every twenty-four hours. 
But what security would there be for any 
calculations in life in a state of things in ex- 
pectation of a revolution any moment? 
Compared with the freedom of action in 
such a government as ours, any form of 
communism is an iniquitous and meddle- 
some despotism. In a less degree an asso- 
ciation to which a man surrenders the right 
to say when, where, and for how much he 
shall work, is a despotism, and when it goes 
further and attempts to put a pressure on all 
men outside of the association, so that they 
are free neither to work nor to hire the 
workmen they choose, it is an extraordinary 
tyranny. It almost puts in the shade Mexi- 
can or Russian personal government. A de- 
mand is made upon a railway company that 
it shall discharge a certain workman because 
and only because he is not a member of the 
union. The company refuses. Then a dis- 
tant committee orders a strike on that road, 
which throws business far and wide into con- 
fusion, and is the cause of heavy loss to tens 

[ 170] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

of thousands who have no interest in any 
association of capital or labour, many of 
whom are ruined by this violence. Some of 
the results of this surrender of personal lib- 
erty are as illegal as illogical. 

The boycott is a conspiracy to injure an- 
other person, and as such indictable at com- 
mon law. A strike, if a conspiracy only to 
raise wages or to reduce hours of labour, may 
not be indictable, if its object cannot be 
shown to be the injury of another, though 
that may be incidentally its effect. But in 
its incidents, such as violence, intimidation, 
and in some cases injury to the public wel- 
fare, it often becomes an indictable offence. 
The law of conspiracy is the most ill- 
defined branch of jurisprudence, but it is 
safe to say of the boycott and the strike 
that they both introduce an insupportable 
element of tyranny, of dictation, of inter- 
ference, into private life. If they could be 
maintained, society would be at the mercy 
of an irresponsible and even secret tribunal. 

The strike is illogical. Take the recent 
experience in this country. We have had 

[171] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

a long season of depression, in which many 
earned very little and labour sought employ- 
ment in vain. In the latter part of winter 
the prospect brightened, business revived, 
orders for goods poured in to all the factories 
in the country, and everybody believed that 
we were on the eve of a very prosperous sea- 
son. This was the time taken to order 
strikes, and they were enforced in perhaps 
a majority of cases against the wishes of 
those who obeyed the order, and who com- 
plained of no immediate grievance. What 
men chiefly wanted was the opportunity to 
work. The result has been to throw us all 
back into the condition of stagnation and 
depression. Many people are ruined, an im- 
mense amount of capital which ventured 
into enterprises is lost, but of course the 
greatest sufferers are the working men 
themselves. 

The methods of violence suggested by the 
communists and anarchists are not remedial. 
Real difficulties exist, but these do not 
reach them. The fact is that people in any 
relations incur mutual obligations, and the 

[ 172 ] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

world cannot 2.0 on without a recocrnition of 
duties as well as rio-hts. We all aorcc that 
every man has a right to work for whom he 
pleases, and to quit the work if it does not 
or the wages do not suit him. On the other 
hand, a man has a right to hire whom he 
pleases, pay such wages as he thinks he call 
afford, and discharge men who do not suit 
him. But when men come together in the 
relation of employer and employed, other 
considerations arise. A man has capital 
which, instead of loaning at interest or lock- 
ing up in real estate or bonds, he puts into 
a factory. In other words, he unlocks it for 
the benefit partly of men w^ho want wages. 
He has the expectation of making money, of 
making more than he could by lending his 
money. Perhaps he will be disappointed, 
for a common experience is the loss of cap- 
ital thus invested. He hires workmen at 
certain wages. On the strength of this 
arrangement, he accepts orders and makes 
contracts for the delivery of goods. He 
may make money one year and lose the 
next. It is better for the workman that he 

[ 173 J 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

should prosper, for the fund of capital ac- 
cumulated is that upon which they depend 
to give them wages in a dull time. But 
some day when he is in a corner with orders, 
and his rivals are competing for the market, 
and labour is scarce, his men strike on him. 

Conversely, take the workman settled 
down to work in the mill, at the best wages 
attainable at the time. He has a house and 
family. He has given pledges to society. 
His employer has incurred certain duties in 
regard to him by the very nature of their 
relations. Suppose the workman and his 
family cannot live in any comfort on the 
wages he receives. The employer is morally 
bound to increase the wages if he can. But 
if, instead of sympathising with the situation 
of his workman, he forms a combination 
with all the mills of his sort, and reduces 
wages merely to increase his gains, he is 
guilty of an act as worthy of indictment as 
the strike. I do not see why a conspiracy 
against labour is not as illegal as a conspiracy 
against capital. The truth is, the possession 
of power by men or associations makes them 

[ 174] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

selfish and generally cruel. Few employers 
consider anything but the arithmetic of sup- 
ply and demand in fixing wages, and working 
men who have the power, tend to act as 
selfishly as the male printers used to act in 
striking in an establishment which dared 
to give employment to women type-setters. 
It is of course sentimental to say it, but I do 
not expect we shall ever get on with less 
friction than we have now, until men recog- 
nise their duties as well as their rights in 
their relations with each other. 

In running over some of the reasons for 
the present discontent, and the often illogi- 
cal expression of it, I am far from saying 
anything against legitimate associations for 
securing justice and fair play. Disassociated 
labour has generally been powerless against 
accumulated capital. Of course, organised 
labour-getting power will use its power (as 
power is always used) unjustly and tyran- 
nically. It will make mistakes, it will often 
injure itself while inflicting general damage. 
But with all. its injustice, with all its surren- 
der of personal liberty, it seeks to call the 

[175] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

attention of the world to certain hideous 
wrongs, to which the world is likely to 
continue selfishly indifferent unless rudely 
shaken out of its sense of security. Some 
of the objects proposed by these associations 
are chimerical, but the agitation will doubt- 
less go on until another element is intro- 
duced into w^ork and wages than mere supply 
and demand. I believe that sometime it 
will be impossible that a woman shall be 
forced to make shirts at six cents a piece, 
with the gaunt figures of starvation or a life 
of shame waiting at the door. I talked re- 
cently with the driver of a street-car in a 
large city. He received a dollar and sixty 
cents a day. He went on to his platform at 
eight in the morning, and left it at twelve 
at night, sixteen hours of continuous labour 
every day in the week. He had no rest for 
meals, only snatched what he could eat as he 
drove along, or at intervals of five or eight 
minutes at the end of routes. He had no 
Sunday, no holiday in the year. Between 
twelve o'clock at night and eight the next 

morning, he must wash and clean his car. 

[176] 



PREVAILING DI SCONTENT 

Thus his hours of sleep were abridged. He 
was obHged to keep an eye on the passengers 
to see that they put their fares in the box, to 
be always responsible for them, that they got 
on and off without accident, to watch that 
the rules were enforced, and that collisions 
and common street dangers were avoided. 
This mental and physical strain for sixteen 
consecutive hours, with scant sleep, so de- 
moralised him that he was obliQfed once in 
two or three months to hire a substitute and 
go away to sleep. This is treating a human 
being with less consideration than the horses 
receive. He is powerless against the great 
corporation ; If he complains, his place is in- 
stantly filled ; the public does not care. 

Now what I want to say about this case, 
and that of the w^oman who makes a shirt 
for six cents (and these are only types of dis- 
regard of human souls and bodies that we 
are all familiar with), is that if society re- 
mains indifferent it must expect that organi- 
sations will attempt to right them, and the 
like wrongs, by ways violent and destructive 
of the innocent and guilty alike. It is hu- 

[177] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

man nature, it is the lesson of history, that 
real wrongs, unredressed, grow into prepos- 
terous demands. Men are much like nature 
in action ; a little disturbance of atmospheric 
equilibrium becomes a cyclone, a slight break 
in the levee a crevasse with immense de- 
structive power. 

In considering the growth of discontent, 
and of a natural disregard of duties between 
employers and employed, it is to be noted 
that while wages in nearly all trades are 
high, the service rendered deteriorates, less 
conscience is put into the work, less care to 
give a fair day's work for a fair day's wages, 
and that pride in good work is vanishing. 
This may be in the nature of retaliation for 
the indifference to humanity taught by a 
certain school of political economists, but it 
is, nevertheless, one of the most alarming 
features of these times. How to cultivate 
the sympathy of the employers with the em- 
ployed as men, and how to interest the em- 
ployed in their work beyond the mere wages 
they receive, is the double problem. 

As the intention of this paper was not to 

[178] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

suggest remedies, but only to review some of 
the causes of discontent, I will only say, as to 
this double problem, that I see no remedy so 
long as the popular notion prevails that the 
greatest good of life is to make money 
rapidly, and while it is denied that all men 
who contribute to prosperity ought to share 
equitably in it. The employed must recog- 
nise the necessity of an accumulated fund of 
capital, and on the other hand the employer 
must be as anxious to have about him a con- 
tented, prosperous community, as to heap up 
money beyond any reasonable use for it. 
The demand seems to be reasonable that the 
employer in a prosperous year ought to share 
with the workmen the profits beyond a limit 
that capital, risk, enterprise, and superior 
skill can legitimately claim ; and that on the 
other hand the workmen should stand by the 
employer in hard times. 

Discontent, then, arises from absurd no- 
tions of equality, from natural conditions of 
inequality, from false notions of education, 
and from the very patent fact, in this age, 
that men have been educated into wants 

[ 179] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

much more rapidly than social conditions 
have been adjusted, or perhaps ever can be 
adjusted, to satisfy those wants. Beyond all 
the actual hardship and suffering, there is 
an immense mental discontent which has to 
be reckoned with. 

This leads me to what I chiefly wanted to 
say in this paper, to the cause of discontent 
which seems to me altogether the most 
serious, altogether the most difficult to deal 
with. We may arrive at some conception of 
it, if we consider what it is that the well-to- 
do, the prosperous, the rich, the educated 
and cultivated portions of society, most value 
just now. 

If, to take an illustration w^hich is suffi- 
ciently remote to give us the necessary per- 
spective, if the political economists, the 
manufacturers, the traders and aristocracy of 
England had had chiefly in mind the devel- 
opment of the labouring people of England 
into a fine type of men and women, full of 
health and physical vigour, with minds ca- 
pable of expansion and enjoyment, the crea- 
tion of decent, happy, and contented homes, 

[i8o] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

would they have reared the industrial fabric 
we now see there? If they had not put the 
accumulation of wealth above the good of in- 
dividual humanity, would they have turned 
England into a grimy and smoky workshop, 
commanding the markets of the world by 
cheap labour, condemning the mass of the 
people to unrelieved toil and the most squalid 
and degraded conditions of life in towns, while 
the land is more and more set apart for the 
parks and pleasure grounds of the rich ? 
The policy pursued has made England the 
richest of countries, a land of the highest 
refinement and luxury for the upper classes, 
and of the most misery for the great mass 
of common people. On this point we have 
but to read the testimony of English writers 
themselves. It is not necessary to suppose 
that the political economists were inhuman. 
They no doubt believed that if England 
attained this commanding position, the 
accumulated wealth would raise all classes 
into better conditions. Their mistake is 
that of all peoples who have made money 
their first object. Looked at merely on the 

[i8i] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

material side, you would think that what a 
philanthropic statesman would desire, who 
wished a vigorous, prosperous nation, would 
be a strong and virile population, thrifty and 
industrious, and not mere slaves of mines 
and mills, degenerating in their children, 
year by year, physically and morally. But 
apparently they have gone upon the theory 
that it is money, not man, that makes a state. 
In the United States, under totally differ- 
ent conditions, and under an economic theory 
that, whatever its defects on paper, has never- 
theless insisted more upon the worth of the 
individual man, we have had, all the same, 
a distinctly material development. When 
foreign critics have commented upon this, 
upon our superficiality, our commonplace- 
ness, what they are pleased to call the weary 
level of our mediocrity, upon the raging 
unrest and race for fortune, and upon the 
tremendous pace of American life, we have 
said that this is incident to a new country 
and the necessity of controlling physical 
conditions, and of fitting our heterogeneous 

population to their environment. It is 

[ 182 ] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENr 

hardly to be expected, we have said, until we 
have the leisure that comes from easy circum- 
stances and accumulated wealth, that we 
should show the sfraces of the hiofhest civili- 
sation, in intellectual pursuits. Much of this 
criticism is ignorant, and to say the best of 
it, ungracious, considering what we have done 
in the way of substantial appliances for edu- 
cation, in the field of science, in vast charities, 
and missionary enterprises, and what we have 
to show in the diffused refinements of life. 

We are already wealthy ; we have greater 
resources and higher credit than any other 
nation ; we have more wealth than any save 
one ; we have vast accumulations of fortune, 
in private hands and in enormous corpora- 
tions. There exists already, what could not 
be said to exist a quarter of a century ago, a 
class who have leisure. Now what is the 
object in life of this great, growing class that 
has money and leisure, what does it chiefly 
care for ? In your experience of society, 
what is it that it pursues and desires ? Is it 
things of the mind or things of the senses ? 
What is it that interests women, men of for- 

[183] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

tune, club-men, merchants, and professional 
men whose incomes give them leisure to fol- 
low their inclinations, the young men who 
have inherited money ? Is it political duties, 
the affairs of state, economic problems, some 
adjustment of our relations that shall lighten 
and relieve the wrongs and misery every- 
where apparent ; is the interest in intellect- 
ual pursuits and art (except in a dilettante 
way dictated for a season by fashion) in 
books, in the wide range of mental pleasures 
which make men superior to the accidents of 
fortune? Or is the interest of this class, for 
the most part, with some noble exceptions, 
rather in things grossly material, in what is 
called pleasure ? To come to somewhat vul- 
gar details, is not the growing desire for 
dress, for sumptuous houses, for showy equi- 
pages, for epicurean entertainments, for dis- 
play, either refined or ostentatious, rivalry in 
profusion and expense, new methods for kill- 
ing time, for every imaginable luxury, which 
is enjoyed partly because it pleases the senses, 
and partly because it satisfies an ignoble 
craving for class distinction? 

[184] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

I am not referring to these things as a 
moralist at all, but simply in their relation to 
popular discontent. The astonishing growth 
of luxury and the habit of sensual indulgence 
are seen everywhere in this country, but are 
most striking in the city of New York, since 
the fashion and wealth of the whole country 
meet there for display and indulgence, — New 
York, which rivals London and outdoes 
Paris in sumptuousness. There congregates 
more than elsewhere idlers, men and women 
of leisure who have nothing to do except to 
observe or to act in the spectacle of Vanity 
Fair. Aside from the display of luxury in 
the shops, in the streets, in private houses, 
one is impressed by the number of idle 
young men and women of fashion. 

It is impossible that a working man who 
stands upon a metropolitan street corner and 
observes this Bacchanalian revel and prodi- 
gality of expense, should not be embittered 
by a sense of the inequality of the conditions 
of life. But this is not the most mischievous 
effect of the spectacle. It is the example of 

what these people care for. With all their 

[185] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

wealth and opportunities, it seems to him that 
these select people have no higher object than 
the pleasures of the senses, and he is taught 
daily by reiterated example that this is the end 
and aim of life. When he sees the value 
the intelligent and the v^ell-to-do set upon 
material things, and their small regard for 
intellectual things and the pleasures of the 
mind, why should he not most passionately 
desire those things which his more fortunate 
neighbours put foremost? It is not the sight 
of a Peter Cooper and his wealth that discon- 
tents him, nor the intellectual pursuits of the 
scholar who uses the leisure his fortune gives 
him for the higher pleasures of the mind. 
But when society daily dins upon his senses 
the lesson that not manhood and high think- 
ing and a contented spirit are the most 
desirable things, whether one is rich or poor, 
is he to be blamed for having a wrong notion 
of what will or should satisfy him ? What 
the well-to-do, the prosperous, are seen to 
value most in life will be the things most 
desired by the less fortunate in accumulation. 

It is not so much the accumulation of money 

[i86] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

that is mischievous in this country, for the 
most stupid can sec that fortunes are con- 
stantly shifting hands, but it is the use that 
is made of the leisure and opportunity that 
money brings. 

Another observation, which makes men 
discontented with very slow accumulation, is 
that, apparently, in the public estimation it 
does not make much difference whether a 
man acquires wealth justly or unjustly. If 
he only secures enough, he is a power, he has 
social position, he grasps the high honours 
and places in the state. The fact is that the 
toleration of men who secure wealth by well 
known dishonest and sharp practices is a 
chief cause of the demoralisation of the 
public conscience. 

However the lines social and political 
may be drawn, we have to keep in mind 
that nothing in one class can be foreign to 
any other, and that practically one philoso- 
phy underlies all the movements of an age. 
If our philosophy is material, resulting in 
selfish ethics, all our energies will have a 

materialistic tendency. It is not to be 

[187] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

wondered at, therefore, that, in a time when 
making money is the chief object, if it is 
not reckoned the chief good, our education 
should all tend to what is called practical, 
that is, to that which can be immediately 
serviceable in some profitable occupation of 
life, to the neglect of those studies which 
are only of use in training the intellect and 
cultivating, and broadening the higher in- 
telligence. To this purely material and 
utilitarian idea of life, the higher colleges 
and universities everywhere are urged to 
conform themselves. Thus is the utilitarian 
spirit eating away the foundations of a 
higher intellectual life, applying to every- 
thing a material measure. In proportion as 
scholars yield to it, they are lowering the 
standard of what is most to be desired in 
human life, acting in perfect concert with 
that spirit which exalts mioney making as 
the chief good, which makes science itself 
the slave of the avaricious and greedy, and 
fills all the world with discontented and 
ignoble longing. We do not need to be 

told that if we neglect pure science for the 

[i88] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

pursuit of applied science only, applied 
science will speedily be degraded and un- 
fruitful ; and it is just as true that if we 
pursue knowledge only for the sake of gain, 
and not for its own sake, knowledge will 
lose the power it has of satisfying the higher 
needs of the human soul. If we are seen to 
put only a money value on the higher 
education, why should not the working man, 
who regards it only as a distinction of class 
or privilege, estimate it by what he can see 
of its practical results in making men richer, 
or bringing him more pleasure of the 
senses ? 

The world is ruled by ideas, by abstract 
thought. Society, literature, art, politics, in 
any given age are what the prevailing system 
of philosophy makes them. We recognise 
this clearly in studying any past period. 
We see, for instance, how all the currents 
of human life changed upon the adoption 
of the inductive method ; no science, no 
literature, no art, practical or fine, no person, 
inquiring scholar, day labourer, trader, sailor, 

fine lady or humblest housekeeper, escaped 

[189] 



SOME CAUSES OF THE 

the influence. Even though the prevailing 
ethics may teach that every man's highest 
duty is to himself, we cannot escape com- 
munity of sympathy and destiny in this 
cold-blooded philosophy. 

No social or political movement stands 
by itself. If we inquire, we shall find one 
preponderating cause underlying every move- 
ment of the age. If the utilitarian spirit is 
abroad, it accounts for the devotion to the 
production of wealth, and to the consequent 
separation of classes and the discontent, and 
it accounts also for the demand that all 
education shall be immediately useful. I 
was talking the other day with a lady who 
was doubting what sort of an education to 
give her daughter, a young girl of exceed- 
ingly fine mental capacity. If she pursued 
a classical course, she would, at the age of 
twenty-one, know very little of the sciences. 
And I said, why not make her an intellect- 
ual woman ? At twenty-one, with a trained 
mind, all knowledges are at one's feet. 

If anything can correct the evils of devo- 
tion to money, it seems to me that it is the 

[ 190] 



PREVAILING DISCONTENT 

production of intellectual men and women, 
who will find other satisfactions in life than 
those of the senses. And when labour sees 
what it is that is really most to be valued, 
its discontent will be of a nobler kind. 



[191] 



The Education of the Negro 

AT the close of the war for the Union 
about five millions of negroes were 
added to the citizenship of the 
United States. By the census of 1890 this 
number had become over seven and a half 
millions. I use the word negro, because 
the descriptive term black or coloured is 
not determinative. There are many varieties 
of negroes among the African tribes, but all 
of them agree in certain physiological if not 
psychological characteristics, which separate 
them from all other races of mankind ; 
whereas there are many races, black or col- 
oured, like the Abyssinian, which have no 
other negro traits. 

It is also a matter of observation that the 
negro traits persist in recognisable manifes- 
tations, to the extent of occasional rever- 
sions, whatever may be the mixture of a 
white race. In a certain degree this per- 
13 [ 193 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

sistence is true of all races not come from 
an historic common stock. 

In the political reconstruction the negro 
was given the ballot without any require- 
ments of education or property. This was 
partly a measure of party balance of power; 
and partly from a concern that the negro 
would not be secure in his rights as a citizen 
without it, and also upon the theory that the 
ballot is an educating influence. 

This sudden transition and shifting of 
power was resented at the south, resisted at 
first, and finally it has generally been evaded. 
This was due to a variety of reasons or preju- 
dices, not all of them creditable to a gener- 
ous desire for the universal elevation of 
mankind, but one of them the historian will 
judge adequate to produce the result. In- 
deed, it might have been foreseen from 
the beginning. This reconstruction measure 
was an attempt to put the superior part of 
the community under the control of the 
inferior, — these parts separated by all 
the prejudices of race, and by traditions of 
mastership on the one side and of servi- 

[ 194] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

tude on the other. I venture to say that it 
was an experiment that would have failed 
in any community in the United States, 
whether it was presented as a piece of 
philanthropy or of punishment. 

A necessary sequence to the enfranchise- 
ment of the neoTO was his education. How- 
ever limited our idea of a proper common 
education may be, it is a fundamental requisite 
in our form of government that every voter 
should be able to read and write. A recog- 
nition of this truth led to the establishment 
in the south of public schools for the whites 
and blacks, — in short of a public school sys- 
tem. We are not to question the sincerity 
and generousness of this movement, however 
it may have halted and lost enthusiasm in 
many localities. 

This opportunity of education (found also 
in private schools) was hailed by the negroes, 
certainly, with enthusiasm. It cannot be 
doubted that at the close of the war there 
was a general desire among the freedmen to 
be instructed in the rudiments of knowledge 
at least. Many parents, especially women, 

[ 195 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

made great sacrifices to obtain for their chil- 
dren this advantage which had been denied 
to themselves. Many youths, both boys and 
girls, entered into it with a genuine thirst 
for knowledge which it was pathetic to see. 

But it may be questioned, from develop- 
ments that speedily followed, whether the 
mass of negroes did not really desire this 
advantage as a sign of freedom, rather than 
from a wish for knowledge, and covet it be- 
cause it had formerly been the privilege of 
their masters, and marked a broad distinction 
between the races. It was natural that this 
should be so, when they had been excluded 
from this privilege by pains and penalties, 
when in some States it was one of the gravest 
offences to teach a negro to read and write. 
This prohibition was accounted for by the 
peculiar sort of property that slavery created, 
which would become insecure if intelligent, 
for the alphabet is a terrible disturber of all 
false relations in society. 

But the effort at education went further 

than the common school and the primary 

essential instruction. It introduced the 

[196] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

higher education. Colleges — usually called 
universities — for negroes were established 
in many southern States, created and stimu- 
lated by the generosity of northern men and 
societies, and often aided by the liberality 
of the States where they existed. The 
curriculum in these was that in colleges 
generally, — the classics, the higher mathe- 
matics, science, philosophy, the modern lan- 
guages, and in some instances a certain tech- 
nical instruction, which was being tried in 
some northern colleges. The emphasis, how- 
ever, was laid on liberal culture. This higher 
education was offered to the mass that still 
lacked the rudiments of intellectual training, 
in the belief that education — the education 
of the moment, the education of superim- 
posed information, can realise the theory of 
universal equality. 

This experiment has now been in opera- 
tion long enough to enable us to judge 
something of its results and its promises 
for the future. These results are of a nature 
to lead us seriously to inquire whether our 
effort was founded upon an adequate knowl- 

[ 197 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

edge of the negro, of his present develop- 
ment, of the requirements for his personal 
welfare and evolution in the scale of civilisa- 
tion, and for his training in useful and 
honourable citizenship. I am speaking of 
the majority, the mass to be considered in 
any general scheme, and not of the excep- 
tional individuals — exceptions that will 
rapidly increase as the mass is lifted — 
who are capable of taking advantage to the 
utmost of all means of cultivation, and 
who must always be provided with all the 
opportunities needed. 

Millions of dollars have been invested in 
the higher education of the negro, while this 
primary education has been, taking the 
whole mass, wholly inadequate to his needs. 
This has been upon the supposition that the 
higher would compel the rise of the lower 
with the undeveloped negro race as it does 
with the more highly developed white race. 
An examination of the soundness of this 
expectation will not lead us far astray from 
our subject. 

The evolution of a race, distinguishing it 

[ 198 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

from the formation of a nation, is a slow 
process. We recognise a race by certain 
peculiar traits, and by characteristics which 
slowly change. They are acquired little by 
little in an evolution which, historically, it is 
often difficult to trace. They are due to the 
environment, to the discipline of life, and to 
what is technically called education. These 
work together to make what is called char- 
acter, race character, and it is this which Is 
transmitted from generation to generation. 
Acquirements are not hereditary, like habits 
and peculiarities, physical or mental. A 
man does not transmit to his descendants 
his learning, though he may transmit the 
aptitude for it. This is Illustrated in fac- 
tories where skilled labour is handed down 
and fixed in the same families, that is, where 
the same kind of labour is continued from 
one generation to another. The child, put 
to work, has not the knowledge of the parent, 
but a special aptitude in his skill and dex- 
terity. Both body and mind have acquired 
certain transmissible traits. The same thing 
is seen on a larger scale in a whole nation, 

[ 199] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

like the Japanese, who have been trained into 
what seems an art instinct. 

It is this character, quality, habit, the 
result of a slow educational process, which 
distinguishes one race from another. It is 
this that the race transmits, and not the 
more or less accidental education of a dec- 
ade or an era. The Brahmins carry this idea 
into the next life, and say that the departing 
spirit carries with him nothing except this 
individual character, no acquirements or in- 
formation or extraneous culture. It was 
perhaps in the same spirit that the sad 
preacher in Ecclesiastes said, there is no 
" knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, 
whither thou goest." 

It is by this character that we classify civ- 
ilised and even semi-civilised races ; by this 
slowly developed fibre, this slow accumula- 
tion of inherent quality in the evolution of 
the human being from lower to higher, that 
continues to exist notwithstanding the power- 
ful influence of governments and religions. 
We are understood when we speak of the 

French, the Italian, the Pole, the Spanish, 

[ 200 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

the English, the German, the Arab race, the 
Japanese, and so on. It is what a foreign 
writer calls, not inaptly, a collective race soul. 
As it is slow in evolution, it is persistent 
in enduring. 

Further, we recognise it as a stage of 
progress, historically necessary in the devel- 
opment of man into a civilised adaptation to 
his situation in this w^orld. It is a process 
that cannot be much hurried, and a result 
that cannot be leaped to out of barbarism by 
any superimposition of knowledge or even 
quickly by any change of environment. We 
may be right in our modern notion that edu- 
cation has a magical virtue that can work 
any kind of transformation ; but we are cer- 
tainly not right in supposing that it can do 
this instantly, or that it can work this effect 
upon a barbarous race in the same period of 
time that it can upon one more developed, 
one that has acquired at least a race con- 
sciousness. 

Before going further, and in order to avoid 
misunderstanding, it is proper to say that 
I have the firmest belief in the ultimate de- 

[ 20I ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

velopment of all mankind into a higher plane 
than it occupies now. I should otherwise be 
in despair. This faith will never desist in 
the effort to bring about the end desired. 
But, if we work with Providence, we must 
work in the reasonable ways of Providence, 
and add to our faith, patience. 

It seems to be the rule in all history that 
the elevation of a lower race is effected only 
by contact with one higher in civilisation. 
Both reform and progress come from ex- 
terior influences. This is axiomatic, and ap- 
plies to the fields of government, religion, 
ethics, art, and letters. 

We have been taught to regard Africa as a 
dark, stolid continent, unawakened, unvisited 
by the agencies and influences that have 
transformed the world from ase to ao-e. Yet 
it was in northern and northeastern Africa 
that within historic periods three of the 
most powerful and brilliant civilisations 
were developed, — the Egyptian, the Cartha- 
ginian, the Saracenic. That these civilisa- 
tions had more than a surface contact with 

the interior, we know. To take the most 

[ 202] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

ancient of them, and that which longest en- 
dured, the Eg3'ptian, the Pharaohs carried 
their conquests and their power deep into 
Africa. In tlic story of their invasions and 
occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on 
temple walls, we find the negro figuring as 
captive and slave. This contact may not 
have been a fruitful one for the elevation of 
the negro, but it proves that for ages he was 
in one way or another in contact with a su- 
perior civilisation. In later days we find 
little trace of it in the home of the negro, 
but in Egypt the negro has left his impress 
in the mixed blood of the Nile valley. 

The most striking example of the contact 
of the neo-ro with a hio;her civilisation is in 
the powerful mediaeval empire of Songhay, 
established in the heart of the negro coun- 
try. The vast strip of Africa lying north of 
the equator and south of the twentieth par- 
allel and west of the upper Nile, was then, as 
it is now, the territory of tribes distinctly de- 
scribed as Nesfro. The river Nisfer runninof 
northward from below Jenne to near Tim- 

buctoo, and then turning west and south to 

[ 203] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

the Gulf of Guinea, flows through one of the 
richest valleys in the world. In richness it 
is comparable to that of the Nile, and like 
that of the Nile its fertility depends upon 
the water of the central stream. Here arose 
In early times the powerful empire of Song- 
hay, which disintegrated and fell into tribal 
confusion about the middle of the seven- 
teenth century. For a long time the seat of 
its power was the city of Jenne, in later days 
it was Timbuctoo. 

This is not the place to enlarge upon this 
extraordinary piece of history. The best 
account of the empire of Songhay is to be 
found in the pages of Barth, the German 
traveller, who had access to what seemed to 
him a credible Arab history. Considerable 
light Is thrown upon it by a recent volume 
on Timbuctoo by M. Dubois, a French trav- 
eller. M. Dubois finds reason to believe that 
the founders of the Songhese empire came 
from Yemen, and sought refuge from Mos- 
lem fanaticism in Central Africa some 
hundred and fifty years after the Hejira. 

The origin of the empire is obscure, but the 

[ 204] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

development was not indigenous. It seems 
probable that tlie settlers, following traders, 
penetrated to the Niger valle)^ from the 
valley of the Nile as early as the third or 
fourth century of our era. An evidence of 
this early influence, which strengthened 
from century to century, Dubois finds in the 
architecture of Jenne and Timbuctoo. It is 
not Roman or Saracenic or Gothic, it is 
distinctly Pharaonic. But whatever the 
origin of the Songhay empire, it became in 
time Mohammedan, and so continued to the 
end. Mohammedanism seems, however, to 
have been imposed. Powerful as the empire 
was, it was never free from tribal insurrec- 
tion and internal troubles. The highest 
mark of negro capacity developed in this his- 
tory is, according to the record examined by 
Barth, that one of the emperors was a negro. 
From all that can be gathered in the 
records, the mass of the negroes, which con- 
stituted the body of this empire, remained 
pagan, did not become, except in outward 
conformity, Mohammedan and did not take 
the Moslem civilisation as it was developed 

[ 205 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

elsewhere, and that the disintegration of the 
empire left the negro races practically where 
they were before in point of development. 
This fact, if it is not overturned by further 
search, is open to the explanation that the 
Moslem civilisation is not fitted to the de- 
velopment of the African negro. 

Contact, such as it has been, with higher 
civilisations, has not in all these ages which 
have witnessed the wonderful rise and de- 
velopment of other races, much affected or 
changed the negro. He is much as he 
would be if he had been left to himself. 
And left to himself, even in such a favour- 
able environment as America, he is slow to 
change. In Africa there has been no prog- 
ress in organisation, government, art. No 
negro tribe has ever invented a written 
language. In his exhaustive work on the 
History of Mankind, Professor Frederick 
Ratzel, having studied thoroughly the negro 
belt of Africa, says, " of writing properly so 
called, neither do the modern negroes show 
any trace, nor have traces of older writing 

been found in negro countries." 

[206] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

From this outline review wc come back to 
tiie situation in the United States, where a 
great mass of negroes — possibly over nine 
millions of many shades of colours — is for 
the first time brou^>ht into contact with 
Christian civilisation. This mass is here to 
make or mar our national life, and the prob- 
lem of its destiny has to be met with our 
own. What can we do, what ought we to 
do, for his own good and for our peace and 
national welfare ? 

In the first place, it is impossible to escape 
the profound impression that we have made 
a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as 
a race, in attempting to apply to him the 
same treatment for the development of char- 
acter that w^e would apply to a race more 
highly organised. Has he developed the 
race consciousness, the race soul, as I said 
before, a collective soul, which so strongly 
marks other races more or less civilised ac- 
cording to our standards .f^ Do we find in 
him, as a mass (individuals always excepted), 
that slow deposit of training and education 

called " character," any firm basis of order, 

[ 207 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

initiative of action, the capacity of going 
alone, any sure foundation of morality? It 
has been said that a race may attain a good 
degree of standing in the world without the 
refinement of culture, but never without 
virtue, either in the Roman or the modern 
meaning of that word. 

The African, now the American negro, 
has come in the United States into a more 
favourable position for development than he 
has ever before had offered. He has come 
to it through hardship, and his severe ap- 
prenticeship is not ended. It is possible 
that the historians centuries hence, looking 
back over the rough road that all races have 
travelled in their evolution, may reckon slav- 
ery and the forced transportation to the new 
world, a necessary step in the training of the 
negro. We do not know. The ways of 
Providence are not measurable by our foot 
rules. We see that slavery was unjust, un- 
economic, and the worst training for citizen- 
ship in such a government as ours. It 
stifled a number of germs that might have 

produced a better development, such as in- 

[208] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

dividuality, responsibility, and tlirift, — germs 
absolutely necessary to the well-being of a 
race. It laid no foundation of morality, 
but in place of morality saw cultivated a 
superstitious, emotional, hysterical religion. 
It is true that it tauo-ht a savao-e race sub- 
ordination and obedience. Nor did it stifle 
certain inherent temperamental virtues, faith- 
fulness, often highly developed, and frequently 
cheerfulness and philosophic contentment in 
a situation that \vould have broken the spirit 
of a more sensitive race. In short, under all 
the disadvantages of slavery the race showed 
certain fine traits, qualities of humour, and 
good humour, and capacity for devotion, 
which were abundantly testified to by south- 
erners during the progress of the Civil War. 
It has, as a race, traits wholly distinct from 
those of the whites, which are not only inter- 
esting but might be a valuable contribution 
to a cosmopolitan civilisation ; gifts also, such 
as the love of music, and temperamental 
gayety, mixed with a note of sadness, as in 
the Hungarians. 

But slavery brought about one result, and 

14 [ 209 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

that the most difficult in the development 
of a race from savagery, and especially a 
tropical race, a race that has always been 
idle in the luxuriance of a nature that sup- 
plied its physical needs with little labour. 
It taught the negro to work, it transformed 
him, by compulsion it is true, into an indus- 
trial being and held him in the habit of 
industry for several generations. Perhaps 
only force could do this, for it was a radical 
transformation. I am glad to see that this 
result of slavery is recognised by Mr, Booker 
Washington, the ablest and most clear- 
sighted leader the negro race has ever 
had. 

But something more was done under this 
pressure, something more than creation of 
a habit of physical exertion to productive 
ends. Skill was developed. Skilled labour, 
which needs brains, was carried to a high 
degree of performance. On almost all the 
southern plantations, and in the cities also, 
negro mechanics were bred, excellent black- 
smiths, good carpenters, and house-builders 

capable of executing plans of high archi- 

[210] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

tectural merit. Everywhere were negroes 
skilled in trades, and competent in various 
mechanical industries. 

The opportunity and the disposition to 
labour make the basis of all our civilisation. 
The negro was taught to work, to be an 
agriculturist, a mechanic, a material pro- 
ducer of something useful. He was taught 
this fundamental thing. Our higher edu- 
cation, applied to him in his present devel- 
opment, operates in exactly the opposite 
direction. 

This is a serious assertion. Its truth or 
falsehood cannot be established by statistics, 
but it is an opinion gradually formed by 
experience, and the observation of men com- 
petent to judge, who have studied the prob- 
lem close at hand. Among the witnesses to 
the failure of the result expected from the 
establishment of colleges and universities for 
the negro, are heard, from time to time, and 
more frequently as time goes on, practical 
men from the north, railway men, manufac- 
turers, who have initiated business enterprises 
at the south. Their testimony coincides 

[211] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

with that of careful students of the eco- 
nomic and social conditions. 

There was reason to assume, from our 
theory and experience of the higher educa- 
tion in its effect upon white races, that the 
result would be different from what it is. 
When the negro colleges first opened, there 
was a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of 
study, a facility of acquirement, and a good 
order that promised everything for the future. 
It seemed as if the light then kindled would 
not only continue to burn, but would pene- 
trate all the dark and stolid communities. 
It was my fortune to see many of these 
institutions in their early days, and to believe 
that they were full of the greatest promise 
for the race. 

I have no intention of criticising the gen- 
erosity and the noble self-sacrifice that pro- 
duced them, nor the aspirations of their 
inmates. There is no doubt that they furnish 
shining examples of emancipation from 
ignorance, and of useful lives. But a few 
years have thrown much light upon the 

careers and characters of a great proportion 

[212 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

of the graduates, and tlieir effect upon the 
conimunitics of which they form a part, I 
mean, of course, with regard to the industrial 
and moral condition of those communities. 
Have these colleges, as a whole,^ stimulated 
industry, thrift, the inclination to settle down 
to the necessary hard work of the world, or 
have they bred idleness, indisposition to 
work, a vaporous ambition in politics, and 
that sort of conceit of gentility of which the 
world has already enough? If any one is in 
doubt about this he can satisfy himself by a 
sojourn in different localities in the south. 
The condition of New Orleans and its negro 
universities is often cited. It is a favourable 
example, because the ambition of the negro 
has been aided there by influence outside 
of the schools. The federal government 
has imposed upon the intelligent and sensi- 
tive population negro ofificials in high posi- 

1 This sentence should have been further quahficd by 
acknowledging the excellent work done by the colleges at 
Atlanta and Nashville, w^hich, under exceptionally good 
management, have sent out much-needed teachers. I be- 
lieve that their success, however, is largely owing to their 
practical features. — C. D. W. 

[ 213 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

tions, because they were negroes and not 
because they were specially fitted for those 
positions by character or ability. It is my 
belief that the condition of the race in- 
New Orleans is lower than it was several 
years ago, and that the influence of the 
higher education has been in the wrong 
direction. 

This is not saying that the higher edu- 
cation is responsible for the present con- 
dition of the negro. Other influences have 
retarded his elevation and the develop- 
ment of proper character, and most im- 
portant means have been neglected. I only 
say that w^e have been disappointed in our 
extravagant expectations of what this edu- 
cation could do for a race undeveloped, 
and so wanting in certain elements of 
character, and that the millions of money 
devoted to it might have been much better 
applied. 

We face a grave national situation. It 
cannot be successfully dealt with sentimen- 
tally. It should be faced with knowledge 

and candour. We must admit our mistakes, 

[214] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

both social and political, and set about the 
solution of our problem with intelligent reso- 
lution and a large charity. It is not simply 
a southern question. It is a northern ques- 
tion as well. For the truth of this I have 
only to appeal to the consciousness of all 
northern communities in which there are 
negroes in any considerable numbers. Have 
the negroes improved, as a rule (always 
remembering the exceptions), in thrift, truth- 
fulness, morality, in the elements of industri- 
ous citizenship, even in States and towns 
where there has been the least prejudice 
against their education 1 In a paper read 
at the last session of this Association, Pro- 
fessor W. F. Willcox of Cornell University 
showed by statistics that in proportion to 
population there were more negro criminals 
in the north than in the south. " The 
negro prisoners in the southern States to ten 
thousand negroes increased between 1880 
and 1890 twenty-nine per cent, while the 
white prisoners, to ten thousand whites in- 
creased only eight per cent." " In the States 
where slavery was never established, the 

[-15] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

white prisoners increased seven per cent 
faster than the white population, while the 
negro prisoners no less than thirty-nine per 
cent faster than the negro population. Thus 
the increase of negro criminality, so far as it 
is reflected in the number of prisoners, ex- 
ceeded the increase of white criminality 
more in the north than it did in the 
south." 

This statement was surprising. It cannot 
be accounted for by colour prejudice at the 
north ; it is related to the known shiftless- 
ness and irresponsibility of a great portion 
of the negro population. If it could be 
believed that this shiftlessness is due to the 
late state of slavery, the explanation would 
not do away with the existing conditions. 
Schools at the north have for a long time 
been open to the negro ; though colour pre- 
judice exists, he has not been on the whole 
in an unfriendly atmosphere, and willing 
hands have been stretched out to help him 
in his ambition to rise. It is no doubt true, 
as has been often said lately, that the negro 

at the north has been crowded out of many 

[216] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

occupations by more vigorous races, newly 
come to this country, crowded out not only 
of factory industries and agricultural, but of 
the positions of servants, waiters, barbers, 
and other minor ways of earning a living. 
The general verdict is that this loss of posi- 
tion is due to lack of stamina and trust- 
w^orthiness. Wherever a negro has shown 
himself able, honest, attentive to the moral 
and economic duties of a citizen, either suc- 
cessful in accumulating property or filling 
honourably his station in life, he has gained 
respect and consideration in the community 
in which he is known ; and this is as true at 
the south as at the north, notwithstanding 
the race antagonism is more accentuated by 
reason of the preponderance of negro popu- 
lation there and the more recent presence 
of slavery. Upon this ugly race antagonism 
it is not necessary to enlarge here in discuss- 
ing the problem of education, and I will 
leave it with the single observation that I 
have heard intelligent negroes, who were 
honestly at work, accumulating property and 
disposed to postpone active politics to a 

[ 217 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

more convenient season, say that they had 
nothing to fear from the intelligent white 
population, but only from the envy of the 
ignorant. 

The whole situation is much aggravated 
by the fact that there is a considerable 
infusion of white blood in the negro race 
in the United States, leading to complica- 
tions and social aspirations that are infi- 
nitely pathetic. Time only and no present 
contrivance of ours can ameliorate this 
condition. 

I have made this outline of our negro 
problem in no spirit of pessimism or of 
prejudice, but in the belief that the only 
way to remedy an evil or a difficulty is can- 
didly and fundamentally to understand it. 
Two things are evident : First, the negro 
population is certain to increase in the 
United States, in a ratio at least equal to 
that of the whites. Second, the south needs 
its labour. Its deportation is an idle dream. 
The only visible solution is for the negro 
to become an integral and an intelligent 

part of the industrial community. The way 

[218] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

may be long, but he must work his way up. 
Sympathetic aid may do much, but the salva- 
tion of the negro is in his own hands, in the 
development of individual character and a 
race soul. This is fully understood by his 
wisest leaders. His worst enemy is the dem- 
agogue who flatters him with the delusion 
that all he needs for his elevation is freedom 
and certain privileges that were denied him 
in slavery. 

In all the northern cities heroic efforts 
are made to assimilate the foreign popula- 
tion by education and instruction in Ameri- 
canism. In the south, in the city and on 
plantation, the same effort is necessary for 
the negro, but it must be more radical and 
fundamental. The common school must be 
as fully sustained and as far reaching as it 
is in the north, reaching the lowest in the 
city slums and the most ignorant in the 
agricultural districts, but to its strictly ele- 
mental teaching must be added moral in- 
structions, and training in industries and in 
habits of industry. Only by such rudimen- 
tary and industrial training can the mass of 

[ 219 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

the negro race in the United States be ex- 
pected to improve in character and position. 
A top-dressing of culture on a field with no 
depth of soil may for a moment stimulate 
the promise of vegetation, but no fruit will 
be produced. It is a gigantic task, and 
generations may elapse before it can in any 
degree be relaxed. 

Why attempt it ? Why not let things drift 
as they are ? Why attempt to civilise the 
race within our doors, while there are so 
many distant and alien races to whom we 
ought to turn our civilising attention } The 
answer is simple and does not need elabora- 
tion. A growing ignorant mass in our body 
politic, inevitably cherishing bitterness of 
feeling, is an increasing peril to the public. 

In order to remove this peril, by trans- 
forming the negro into an industrial, law- 
abiding citizen, identified with the prosperity 
of his country, the cordial assistance of the 
southern white population is absolutely es- 
sential. It can only be accomplished by 
regarding him as a man, with the natural 

right to the development of his capacity and 

[ 220] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

to contentment in a secure social state. The 
effort for his elevation must be fundamental. 
The opportunity of the common school must 
be universal, and attendance in it compul- 
sory. Beyond this, training in the decencies 
of life, in conduct, and in all the industries, 
must be offered in such industrial institu- 
tions as that of Tuskegee. For the excep- 
tional cases a higher education can be easily 
provided for those who show themselves 
worthy of it, but not offered as an indis- 
criminate panacea. 

The question at once arises as to the kind 
of teachers for these schools of various grades. 
It is one of the most difficult in the whole 
problem. As a rule, there is little gain, 
either in instruction or in elevation of char- 
acter, if the teacher is not the superior of the 
taught. The learners must respect the 
attainments and the authority of the teacher. 
It is a too frequent fault of our common- 
school system that, owing to inadequate pay 
and ignorant selections, the teachers are not 
competent to their responsible task. The 
hio^hest skill and attainment are needed to 

[ 221 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

evoke the powers of the common mind, even 
in a community called enlightened. Much 
more are they needed when the community 
is only slightly developed mentally and mor- 
ally. The process of educating teachers of 
this race, fit to promote its elevation, must be 
a slow one. Teachers of various industries, 
such as agriculture and the mechanic arts, 
will be more readily trained than teachers of 
the rudiments of learning in the common 
schools. It is a very grave question whether, 
with some exceptions, the school and moral 
training of the race should not be for a consid- 
erable time to come in the control of the white 
race. But it must be kept in mind that 
instructors cheap in character, attainments, 
and breeding, will do more harm than good. 
If we give ourselves to this work, we must 
give of our best. 

Without the cordial concurrence in this 
effort of all parties, black and white, local 
and national, it will not be fruitful in funda- 
mental and permanent good. Each race 
must accept the present situation and build on 
it. To this end it is indispensable that one 

[ 222 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

great evil, which was inherent in the recon- 
struction measures and is still persisted in, 
shall be eliminated. The party allegiance of 
the negro was bid for by the temptation of 
office and position for which he was in no 
sense fit. No permanent, righteous adjust- 
ment of relations can come till this policy is 
wholly abandoned. Politicians must cease 
to make the negro a pawn in the game of 
politics. 

Let us admit that we have made a mistake. 
We seem to have expected that we could 
accomplish suddenly and by artificial contriv- 
ances a development which historically has 
always taken a long time. Without abate- 
ment of effort or loss of patience, let us put 
ourselves in the common-sense, the scientific, 
the historic line. It is a gigantic task, only 
to be accomplished by long labour in accord 
with the Divine purpose. 

*' Thou wilt not leave us in the dust ; 
Thou madest man, he knows not why, — 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 
And thou hast made him ; thou art just. 

[ 223 ] 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 

" Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 

Will be the final goal of ill, 

To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. 

" That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete." 



[ 224] 



The Indeterminate Sentence 

WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE 
CRLVHNAL CLASS? 

THE problem of dealing with the 
criminal class seems insolvable, and 
it undoubtedly is with present 
methods. It has never been attempted on a 
fully scientific basis, with due regard to the 
protection of society and to the interests 
of the criminal. 

It is purely an economic and educational 
problem, and must rest upon the same prin- 
ciples that govern in any successful industry, 
or in education, and that we recognise in 
the conduct of life. That little progress 
has been made is due to public indifference 
to a vital question and to the action of senti- 
mentalists, who, in their philanthropic zeal, 
fancy that a radical reform can come without 
radical discipline. We are largely wasting 
our energies in petty contrivances instead of 
striking at the root of the evil. 

^5 [ 225 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

What do we mean by the " criminal 
class " ? It is necessary to define this with 
some precision, in order to discuss intelli- 
gently the means of destroying this class. A 
criminal is one who violates a statute law, or, 
as we say, commits a crime. The human 
law takes cognisance of crime and not of 
sin. But all men who commit crime are not 
necessarily in the criminal class. Speaking 
technically, we put in that class those whose 
sole occupation is crime, who live by it as a 
profession, and who have no other permanent 
industry. They prey upon society. They 
are by their acts at war upon it, and are 
outlaws. 

The State is to a certain extent respon- 
sible for this class, for it has trained most of 
them, from youth up, through successive de- 
tentions in lock-ups, city prisons, county 
jails, and in State prisons, and peniten- 
tiaries on relatively short sentences, under 
influences which tend to educate them as 
criminals and confirm them in a bad life. 
That is to say, if a man once violates the 

law and is caught, he is put into a machine 

[226] 



INDETERMINArE SENTENCE 

from which it is very difficult for him to 
escape without furtlier deterioration. It is 
not simply that the State puts a brand on 
him in the eyes of the community, but it 
takes away his self-respect without giving 
him an opportunity to recover it. Once 
recognised as in the criminal class, he has 
no further concern about the State than that 
of evading its penalties so far as is consistent 
with pursuing his occupation of crime. 

To avoid misunderstanding as to the sub- 
ject of this paper, it is necessary to say that 
it is not dealing with the question of prison 
reform in its whole extent. It attempts to 
consider only a pretty well-defined class. 
But in doing this it does not say that other 
aspects of our public peril from crime are 
not as important as this. We cannot relax 
our efforts in regard to the relations of pov- 
erty, drink, and unsanitary conditions, as 
leading to crime. We have still to take care 
of the exposed children, of those with par- 
entage and surroundings inclining to crime, 
of the degenerate and the unfortunate. We 

have to keep up the warfare all along the 

[ 227 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

line against the demoralisation of society. 
But we have here to deal with a specific 
manifestation; we have to capture a strong- 
hold, the possession of which will put us in 
much better position to treat in detail the 
general evil. 

Why should we tolerate any longer a pro- 
fessional criminal class ? It is not large. It 
is contemptibly small compared with our 
seventy millions of people. If I am not 
mistaken, a late estimate gave us less than 
fifty thousand persons in our State prisons 
and penitentiaries. If we add to them those 
at large who have served one or two terms, 
and are generally known to the police, we 
shall not have probably more than eighty 
thousand of the criminal class. But call it a 
hundred thousand. It is a body that seventy 
millions of people ought to take care of with 
little difficulty. And we certainly ought to 
stop its increase. But we do not. The class 
grows every day. Those who watch the 
criminal reports are alarmed by the fact 
that an increasing number of those arrested 

for felonies are discharged convicts. This is 

[ 228 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

an unmistakable evidence of the growth of 
the outlaw classes. 

But this Is not all. Our taxes are greatly 
increased on account of this class. We re- 
quire more police to watch those who arc at 
large and preying on society. We expend 
more yearly for apprehending and trying 
those caught, for the machinery of criminal 
justice, and for the recurring farce of im- 
prisoning on short sentences and discharging 
those felons to go on with their work of 
swindling and robbing. It would be good 
economy for the public, considered as a tax- 
payer, to pay for the perpetual keep of these 
felons in secure confinement. 

And still this is not the worst. We are 

all living in abject terror of these licensed 

robbers. We fear robbery night and day ; 

we live behind bolts and bars (which should 

be reserved for the criminal) and we are in 

hourly peril of life and property in our 

homes and on the highways. But the evil 

does not stop here. By our conduct we are 

encouraging the growth of the criminal class, 

and we are inviting disregard of law^ and 

[ 229 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

diffusing a spirit of demoralisation through- 
out the country. 

I have spoken of the criminal class as very- 
limited; that is, the class that lives by the 
industry of crime alone. But it is not iso- 
lated, and it has widespread relations. There 
is a large portion of our population not tech- 
nically criminals, which is interested in main- 
taining this criminal class. Every felon is a 
part of a vast network of criminality. He 
has his dependents, his allies, his society of 
vice, all the various machinery of temptation 
and indulgence. 

It happens, therefore, that there is great 
sympathy with the career of the lawbreakers, 
many people are hanging on them for sup- 
port, and among them the so-called criminal 
lawyers. Any legislation likely to interfere 
seriously with the occupation of the criminal 
class or with its increase is certain to meet 
with the opposition of a large body of voters. 
With this active opposition of those inter- 
ested, and the astonishing indifference of the 
general public, it is easy to see why so little 
is done to relieve us of this intolerable bur- 

[ 230 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

den. The fact is, we Gfo on increasins: our 
expenses for police, for criminal procedure, 
for jails and prisons, and we go on increasing 
the criminal class and those affiliated with it. 
And what do we gain by our present 
method .f^ We do not gain the protection of 
society, and we do not gain the reformation 
of the criminal. These two statements do 
not admit of contradiction. Even those who 
cling to the antiquated notion that the busi- 
ness of society is to punish the offender 
must confess that in this game society Is 
getting the worst of it. Society suffers all 
the time, and the professional criminal goes 
on with his occupation, interrupted only by 
periods of seclusion, during which he Is 
comfortably housed and fed. The punish- 
ment he most fears Is being compelled to 
relinquish his criminal career. The object 
of punishment for violation of statute law is 
not vengeance. It is not to Inflict Injury for 
injury. Only a few persons now hold to 
that. They say now that if it does little 
good to the offender, it is deterrent as to 
others. Now, Is our present system deter- 

[ 231 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

rent? The statute law, no doubt, prevents 
many persons from committing crime, but 
our method of administering it certainly 
does not lessen the criminal class, and it 
does not adequately protect society. Is it 
not time we tried, radically, a scientific, a 
disciplinary, a really humanitarian method ? 

The proposed method is the indeterminate 
sentence. This strikes directly at the crim- 
inal class. It puts that class beyond the 
power of continuing its depredations upon 
society. It is truly deterrent, because it is a 
notification to any one intending to enter 
upon that method of living that his career 
ends with his first felony. As to the general 
effects of the indeterminate sentence, I will 
repeat here what I recently wrote for the 
Yale Law Journal: 

It is unnecessary to say in a law journal that 
the indeterminate sentence is a measure as yet 
untried. The phrase has passed into current 
speech, and a considerable portion of the public 
is under the impression that an experiment of 
the indeterminate sentence is actually being 
made. It is, however, still a theory, not adopted 

[ 232 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 



in any legislation or in practice anywhere in the 
world. 

The misconception in regard to this has arisen 
from the fact that under certain regulations paroles 
are granted before the expiration of the statutory 
sentence. 

An indeterminate sentence is a commitment to 
prison without any limit. It is exactly such a 
commitment as the court makes to an asylum of 
a man who is proved to be insane, and it is par- 
alleled by the practice of sending a sick man to 
the hospital until he is cured. 

The introduction of the indeterminate sentence 
into our criminal procedure would be a radical 
change in our criminal legislation and practice. 
The original conception was that the offender 
against the law should be punished, and that the 
punishment should be made to fit the crime, an 
opera boiijfe conception which has been aban- 
doned in reasoning though not in practice. Under 
this conception the criminal code was arbitrarily 
constructed, so much punishment being set down 
opposite each criminal offence, without the least 
regard to the actual guilt of the man as an in- 
dividual sinner. 

Within the present century considerable 
advance has been made in regard to prison reform, 
especially with reference to the sanitary condition 

[ 233 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

of places of confinement. And besides this, efforts 
of various kinds have been made with regard to 
the treatment of convicts, which show that the 
idea was gaining ground that criminals should be 
treated as individuals. The application of the 
English ticket-of-leave system was one of these 
efforts ; it was based upon the notion that, if any 
criminal showed sufficient evidence of a wish to 
lead a different life, he should be conditionally re- 
leased before the expiration of his sentence. The 
parole system in the United States was an attempt 
to carry out the same experiment, and with it 
went along the practice which enabled the pris- 
oner to shorten the time of his confinement by 
good behaviour. In some of the States reforma- 
tories have been established to which convicts 
have been sent under a sort of sliding sentence ; 
that is, with the privilege given to the authorities 
of the reformatory to retain the offender to the 
full statutory term for which he might have been 
sentenced to State prison, unless he had evidently 
reformed before the expiration of that period. 
That is to say, if a penal offence entitled the judge 
to sentence the prisoner for any period from two 
to fifteen years, he could be kept in the reforma- 
tory at the discretion of the authorities for the full 
statutory term. It is from this law that the public 
notion of an indeterminate sentence is derived. 

[ 234] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

It is, in fact, determinate, because the statute pre- 
scribes its limit. 

The introduction of the tickct-of-leave, and the 
parole systems, and the earning of time by good 
behaviour were philanthropic suggestions and 
promising experiments which have not been justi- 
fied by the results. It is not necessary at this 
time to argue that no human discretion is ade- 
quate to mete out just punishment for crimes; 
and it has come to be admitted generally, by men 
enlightened on this subject, that the real basis for 
dealing with the criminal rests, firstly, upon the 
right of society to secure itself against the attacks 
of the vicious, and secondly, upon the duty im- 
posed upon society, to reform the criminal if that 
is possible. It is patent to the most superficial 
observation that our present method does not pro- 
tect society, and does not lessen the number of the 
criminal class, either by deterrent methods or by 
reformatory processes, except in a very limited 
v^ay. 

Our present method is neither economic nor 
scientific nor philanthropic. If we consider the 
well-defined criminal class alone, it can be said 
that our taxes and expenses for police and the 
whole criminal court machinery, for dealing with 
those who are apprehended, and watching those 
who are preying upon society, yearly increase, 

[ 235 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

while all private citizens in their own houses or in 
the streets live in constant terror of the depreda- 
tions of this class. Considered from the scientific 
point of view, our method is absolutely crude, and 
but little advance upon mediaeval conditions; and 
while it has its sentimental aspects, it is not real 
philanthropy, because comparatively few of the 
criminal class are permanently rescued. 

The indeterminate sentence has two distinct 
objects : one h the absolute protection of society 
from the out)aws whose only business in life is to 
prey upon society; and the second is the placing 
of these offiiiders in a position where they can be 
kept long enough for scientific treatment as de- 
cadent hunaan beings, in the belief that their lives 
can be changed in their purpose. No specific 
time can be predicted in which a man by dis- 
cipline can be expected to lay aside his bad habits 
and pu> on good habits, because no two human 
beings •are alike, and it is therefore necessary that 
an indefinite time in each case should be allowed 
for the experiment of reformation. 

We have now gone far enough to see that the 
ticket-of-leave system, the parole system as we ad- 
minister it in the wState prisons (I except now some 
of the reformatories), and the good conduct 
method are substantially failures, and must con- 
tinue to be so until they rest upon the absolute 

[ 236 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 



indeterminate sentence. They are worse than 
failures now, because the pubHc mind is lulled 
into a false security by them, and efforts at gen- 
uine prison reform are defeated. 

It is very significant that the criminal class 
adapted itself readily to the parole system with its 
sliding scale. It was natural that this should be 
so, for it fits in perfectly well with their scheme of 
life. This is to them a sort of business career, 
interrupted now and then only by occasional 
limited periods of seclusion. Any device that 
shall shorten those periods is welcome to them. 
As a matter of fact, we see in the State prisons 
that the men most likely to shorten their time by 
good behaviour, and to get released on parole be- 
fore the expiration of their sentence, are the men 
who make crime their career. They accept this 
discipline as a part of their lot in life, and it does 
not interfere with their business any more than 
the occasional bankruptcy of a merchant interferes 
with his pursuits. 

It follows, therefore, that society is not likely to 
get security for itself, and the criminal class is not 
likely to be reduced essentially or reformed, with- 
out such a radical measure as the indeterminate 
sentence, which, accompanied, of course, by scien- 
tific treatment, would compel the convict to 
change his course of life, or to stay perpetually in 
confinement. [ 237 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

Of course, the indeterminate sentence would rad- 
ically change our criminal jurisprudence and our 
statutory provisions in regard to criminals. It 
goes without saying that it is opposed by the 
entire criminal class, and by that very considerable 
portion of the population which is dependent on 
or affiliated with the criminal class, which seeks to 
evade the law and escape its penalties. It is also 
opposed by a small portion of the legal profession 
which gets its living out of the criminal class, and 
it is sure to meet the objection of the sentimental- 
ists who have peculiar notions about depriving a 
man of his liberty, and it also has to overcome the 
objections of many who are guided by precedents, 
and who think the indeterminate sentence would 
be an infringement of the judicial prerogative. 

It is well to consider this latter a little further. 
Our criminal code, artificial and indiscriminating 
as it is, is the growth of ages and is the result of 
the notion that society ought to take vengeance 
upon the criminal, at least that it ought to punish 
him, and that the judge, the interpreter of the 
criminal law, was not only the proper person to 
determine the guilt of the accused, by the aid of 
the jury, but was the sole person to judge of the 
amount of punishment he should receive for his 
crime. Now two functions are involved here : one 
is the determination that the accused has broken 

[238] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

the law, the other is gauging within the rules of the 
code the punishment that each individual should 
receive. It is a theological notion that the divine 
punishment for sin is somehow delegated to man 
for the punishment of crime, but it does not need 
any argument to show that no tribunal is able with 
justice to mete out punishment in any individual 
case, for probably the same degree of guilt does 
not attach to two men in the violation of the same 
statute, and while, in the rough view of the criminal 
law, even, one ought to have a severe penalty, the 
other should be treated with more leniency. All 
that the judge can do under the indiscriminating 
provisions of the statute is to make a fair guess at 
what the man should suffer. 

Under the present enlightened opinion which 
sees that not punishment but the protection of 
society and the good of the criminal are the things 
to be aimed at, the judge's office would naturally 
be reduced to the task of determining the guilt of 
the man on trial, and then the care of him would 
be turned over to expert treatment, exactly as in a 
case when the judge determines the fact of a man's 
insanity. 

If objection is made to the indeterminate sen- 
tence on the ground that it is an unusual or cruel 
punishment, it may be admitted that it is unusual, 
but that commitment to detention cannot be called 

[ ^39 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

cruel when the convict is given the key to the 
house in which he is confined. It is for him to 
choose whether he will become a decent man and 
go back into society, or whether he will remain 
a bad man and stay in confinement. For the 
criminal who is, as we might say, an accidental 
criminal, or for the criminal who is susceptible to 
good influences, the term of imprisonment under 
the indeterminate sentence would be shorter than 
it would be safe to make it for criminals under 
the statute. The incorrigible offender, however, 
would be cut off at once and forever from his 
occupation, which is, as we said, varied by periodic 
residence in the comfortable houses belonging to 
the State. 

A necessary corollary of the indeterminate sen- 
tence is that every State prison and penitentiary 
should be a reformatory, in the modern meaning of 
that term. It would be against the interest of 
society, all its instincts of justice, and the height 
of cruelty to an individual criminal to put him in 
prison without limit unless all the opportunities 
were afforded him for changing his habits radically. 
It may be said in passing that the indeterminate 
sentence would be in itself to any man a great 
stimulus to reform, because his reformation would 
be the only means of his terminating that sentence. 
At the same time a man left to himself, even in the 

[ 240] 



INDETERMINATE SE NTE NC E 

best ordered of our State prisons which is not a 
reformatory, would be scarcely likely to make 
much improvement. 

I have not space in this article to consider the 
character of the reformatory; that subject is fortu- 
nately engaging the attention of scientific people 
as one of the most interesting of our modern prob- 
lems. To take a decadent human being, a wreck 
physically and morally, and try to make a man of 
him, that is an attempt worthy of a people who 
claim to be civilised. An illustration of what can 
be done in this direction is furnished by the Elmira 
Reformatory, where the experiment is being made 
with most encouraging results, which, of course, 
would be still better if the indeterminate sentence 
were brought to its aid. 

When the indeterminate sentence has been 
spoken of with a view to legislation, the question 
has been raised whether it should be applied to 
prisoners on the first, second, or third conviction 
of a penal offence. Legislation in regard to the 
parole system has also considered whether a man 
should be considered in the criminal class on his 
first conviction for a penal offence. Without enter- 
ing upon this question at length, I will suggest that 
the convict should, for his own sake, have the inde- 
terminate sentence applied to him upon conviction 
of his first penal offence. He is much more likely 
i6 [ 241 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

to reform then than he would be after he had had 
a term in the State prison and was again convicted, 
and the chance of his reformation would be lessened 
by each subsequent experience of this kind. The 
great object of the indeterminate sentence, so far 
as the security of society is concerned, is to dimin- 
ish the number of the criminal class, and this will 
be done when it is seen that the first felony a man 
commits is likely to be his last, and that for a 
young criminal contemplating this career there is 
in this direction " no thoroughfare." By his very 
first violation of the statute he walks into confine- 
ment, to stay there until he has given up the pur- 
pose of such a career. 

In the limits of this paper I have been obliged 
to confine myself to remarks upon the indeter- 
minate sentence itself, without going into the 
question of the proper organisation of reformatory 
agencies to be applied to the convict, and without 
consideration of the means of testing the reforma- 
tion of a man in any given case. I will only add 
that the methods at Elmira have passed far beyond 
the experimental stage in this matter. 

The necessary effect of the adoption of 
the indeterminate sentence for felonies is 
that every State prison and penitentiary 

must be a reformatory. The convict goes 

[ 242 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

into it for the term of a year at least (since 
the criminal law, according to ancient prec- 
edent, might require that, and because the 
discipline of the reformatory would require 
it as a practical rule), and he stays there 
until, in the judgment of competent authority, 
he is fit to be trusted at large. 

If he is incapable of reform, he must stay 
there for his natural life. He is a free agent. 
He can decide to lead an honest life and 
have his liberty, or he can elect to work for 
the State all his life in criminal confinement. 

When I say that every State prison is to 
be a reformatory, I except, of course, from 
its operation, those sentenced for life for 
murder, or other capital offences, and those 
who have proved themselves incorrigible by 
repeated violations of their parole. 

It is necessary now to consider the treat- 
ment in the reformatory. Only a brief 
outline of it can be given here, with a general 
statement of the underlying principles. The 
practical application of these principles can 
be studied in the Elmira Reformatory of New 
York, the only prison for felons where the 

[ 243 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

proposed system is carried out with the 
needed disciplinary severity. In studying 
Elmira, however, it must be borne in mind 
that the best effects cannot be obtained there, 
owing to the lack of the indeterminate sen- 
tence. In this institution the convict can 
only be detained for the maximum term pro- 
vided in the statute for his offence. When 
that is reached, the prisoner is released, 
whether he is reformed or not. 

The system of reform under the indeter- 
minate sentence, which for convenience may 
be called the Elmira system, is scientific, and 
it must be administered entirely by trained 
men and by specialists ; the same sort of 
training for the educational and industrial 
work as is required in a college or an indus- 
trial school, and the special fitness required 
for an alienist in an insane asylum. The 
discipline of the establishment must be equal 
to that of a military school. 

We have so far advanced in civilisation 
that we no longer think of turning the insane, 
the sick, the feeble-minded, over to the care 
of men without training chosen by the chance 

[ 244] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

of politics. They are put under specialists 
for treatment. It is as necessary that con- 
victs should be under the care of specialists, 
for they are the most difficult and interesting 
subjects for scientific treatment. If not 
criminals by heredity, they are largely made 
so by environment; they are either physical 
degenerates or they are brutalised by vice. 
They have lost the power of distinguishing 
right from wrong; they commonly lack will- 
power, and so are incapable of changing their 
habits without external influence. In short, 
the ordinary criminal is unsound and diseased 
in mind and body. 

To deal with this sort of human decadent 
is, therefore, the most interesting problem 
that can be offered to the psychologist, to the 
physiologist, to the educator, to the believer 
in the immortality of the soul. He is still a 
man, not altogether a mere animal, and there 
is always a possibility that he may be made 
a decent man, and a law-abiding, productive 
member of society. 

Here, indeed, is a problem worthy of the 
application of all our knowledge of mind and 

[ 245 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

of matter, of our highest scientific attain- 
ments. But it is the same problem that we 
have in all our education, be it the training 
of the mind, the development of the body, or 
the use of both to good ends. And it goes 
without saying that its successful solution, in 
a reformatory for criminals, depends upon the 
character of the man who administers the 
institution. There must be at the head of it 
a man of character, of intellectual force, of 
administrative ability, and all his subordinate 
officers must be fitted for their special task, 
exactly as they should be for a hospital, or a 
military establishment, for a college, or for a 
school of practical industries. And when 
such men are demanded, they will be forth- 
coming, just as they are in any department 
in life, when a business is to be developed, a 
great engineering project to be undertaken, 
or an army to be organised and disciplined. 

The development of our railroad system 
produced a race of great railroad men. The 
protection of society by the removal and 
reform of the criminal class, when the public 

determines upon it, will call into the service 

[ 246 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

a class of men fitted for the great work. We 
know this is so because already, since the 
discussion of this question has been current, 
and has passed into actual experiment, a race 
of workers and prison superintendents all 
over the country have come to the front who 
are entirely capable of administering the 
reform system under the indeterminate sen- 
tence. It is in this respect, and not in the 
erection of model prisons, that the great 
advance in penology has been made in the 
last twenty years. Men of scientific attain- 
ment are more and more giving their atten- 
tion to this problem as the most important 
in our civilisation. And science is ready to 
take up this problem when the public is tired 
and ashamed of being any longer harried and 
bullied and terrorised over by the criminal 
class. 

The note of this reform is discipline, and 
its success rests upon the law of habit. We 
are all creatures of habit, physical and mental. 
Habit is formed by repetition of any action. 
Many of our physical habits have become 
automatic. Without entering into a physio- 

[247] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

logical argument, we know that repetition 
produces habit, and that, if this is long con- 
tinued, the habit becomes inveterate. We 
know also that there is a habit, physical and 
moral, of doing right as well as doing wrong. 
The criminal has the habit of doing wrong. 
We propose to submit him to influences that 
will change that habit. We also know that 
this is not accomplished by suppressing that 
habit, but by putting a good one in its place. 

It is true in this case that nature does not 
like a vacuum. The thoughts of men are 
not changed by leaving them to themselves, 
they are changed by substituting other 
thoughts. 

The whole theory of the Elmira system is 
to keep men long enough under a strict 
discipline to change their habits. This dis- 
cipline is administered in three ways. They 
are put to school ; they are put at work ; they 
are prescribed minute and severe rules of 
conduct, and in the latter training is included 
military drill. 

The school and the workshop are both 

primarily for discipline and the formation 

[248] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

of new habits. Only incidentally are the 
school and the workshop intended to fit a 
man for an occupation outside of the prison. 
The whole discipline is to put a man in pos- 
session of his faculties, to give him self- 
respect, to get him in the way of leading a 
normal and natural life. But it is true that 
what he acquires by the discipline of study 
and the discipline of work will be available 
in his earning an honest living. Keep a 
man long enough in this three-ply discipline, 
and he will form permanent habits of well- 
doing. If he cannot and will not form such 
habits, his place is in confinement, where he 
cannot prey upon society. 

There is not space here to give the de- 
tails of the practices at Elmira. They are 
easily attainable. But I will notice one or 
two objections that have been made. One is 
that in the congregate system men neces- 
sarily learn evil from each other. This is, 
of course, an evil. It is here, however, 
partially overcome by the fact that the in- 
mates are kept so busy in the variety of dis- 
cipline applied to them, that they have little 

[ 249 ] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

or no time for anything else. They study 
hard, and are under constant supervision 
as to conduct. And then their prospect of 
parole depends entirely upon the daily record 
they make, and upon their radical change of 
intention. At night they are separated in 
their cells. During the day they are asso- 
ciated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, 
and this association is absolutely necessary 
to their training. In separation from their 
fellows, they could not be trained. Fear is 
expressed that men will deceive their keepers 
and the board which is to pass upon them, 
and obtain parole when they do not deserve 
it. As a matter of fact, men under this dis- 
cipline cannot successfully play the hypocrite 
to the experts who watch them. It is only 
in the ordinary prison where the parole is in 
use with no adequate discipline, and without 
the indefinite sentence, that deception can 
be practised. But suppose a man does play 
the hypocrite so as to deceive the officers, 
who know him as well as any employer 
knows his workmen or any teacher knows 

his scholars, and deceives the independent 

[250] 



INDETERMINATE SENTENCE 

board so as to get a parole. If he violates 
that parole, he can be renianded to the re- 
formatory, and it will be exceedingly difficult 
for him to get another parole. And, if he 
should again violate his parole, he would be 
considered incorrigible and be placed in a 
life prison. 

We have tried all other means of protect- 
ing society, of lessening the criminal class, 
of reforming the criminal. The proposed 
indeterminate sentence, with reformatory dis- 
cipline, is the only one that promises to re- 
lieve society of the insolent domination and 
the terrorism of the criminal class ; is the 
only one that can deter men from making 
a career of crime ; is the only one that offers 
a fair prospect for the reformation of the 
criminal offender. 

Why not try it ? Why not put the whole 
system of criminal jurisprudence and pro- 
cedure for the suppression of crime upon a 
sensible and scientific basis ? 



[-51] 



The Life -Saving and 
Li fe -Prolonging Art 

IN the minds of the pubhc there is a 
mystery about the practice of medicine. 
It deals more or less with the unknown, 
with the occult, it appeals to the imagina- 
tion. Doubtless confidence In its practi- 
tioners is still somewhat due to the belief 
that they are familiar with the secret proc- 
esses of nature, if they are not in actual 
alliance with the supernatural. Investiga- 
tion of the ground of the popular faith 
in the doctor would lead us into meta- 
physics. And yet our physical condition 
has much to do with this faith. It is apt 
to be weak when one is in perfect health ; 
but when one is sick It grows strong. Saint 
and sinner both warm up to the doctor 
when the Judgment Day heaves In view. 

In the popular apprehension the doc- 
tor is still the Medicine Man. We smile 

[253 ] 



THE LIFE-SAFING AND 

when we hear about his antics in barbarous 
tribes ; he dresses fantastically, he puts 
horns on his head, he draws circles on the 
ground, he dances about the patient, shak- 
ing his rattle and uttering incantations. 
There is nothing to laugh at. He is mak- 
ing an appeal to the imagination. And 
sometimes he cures, and sometimes he kills ; 
in either case he gets his fee. What right 
have we to laugh 1 We live in an enlight- 
ened age, and yet a great proportion of the 
people, perhaps not a majority, still be- 
lieve in incantations, have faith in igno- 
rant practitioners who advertise a " natural 
gift," or a secret process or remedy, and 
prefer the charlatan who is exactly on the 
level of the Indian Medicine Man, to the 
regular practitioner, and to the scientific 
student of mind and body and of the prop- 
erties of the materia medica. Why, even 
here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get 
a law to protect the community from the 
imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, 
and to require of a man some evidence of 
capacity and training and skill, before he 

[ 254] 



LIFE-PR LONGING ART 

is let loose to experiment upon suffering 
humanity. Our teachers must pass an 
examination — though the examiner some- 
times does not know as much as the can- 
didate, — for misguiding the youthful mind ; 
the lawyer cannot practise without study 
and a formal admission to the bar; and 
even the clergyman is not accepted in any 
responsible charge until he has given evi- 
dence of some moral and intellectual fit- 
ness. But the profession affecting directly 
the health and life of every human body, 
which needs to avail itself of the accumu- 
lated experience, knowledge, and science of 
all the ages, is open to every ignorant and 
stupid practitioner on the credulity of the 
public. Why cannot we get a law regulat- 
ing the profession which is of most vital 
interest to all of us, excluding ignorance 
and quackery .f^ Because the majority of 
our legislature, representing, I suppose, the 
majority of the public, believe in the " nat- 
ural bone-setter," the herb doctor, the root 
doctor, the old woman who brews a decoc- 
tion of swamp medicine, the " natural gift '* 

[255] 



THE LIFE-SAFING AND 

of some dabbler in diseases, the magnetic 
healer, the faith cure, the mind cure, the 
Christian Science cure, the eflficacy of a 
prescription rapped out on a table by some 
hysterical medium, — in anything but sound 
knowledge, education in scientific methods, 
steadied by a sense of public responsibility. 
Not long ago, on a cross-country road, I 
came across a woman in a farmhouse, 
where I am sure the barnyard drained into 
the well, who was sick ; she had taken a 
shop-full of patent medicines. I advised 
her to send for a doctor. She had no 
confidence in doctors, but said she reck- 
oned she would get along now, for she 
had sent for the seventh son of a seventh 
son, and did n't I think he could certainly 
cure her? I said that combination ought 
to fetch any disease except agnosticism. 
That woman probably influenced a vote 
in the legislature. The legislature believes 
in incantations ; it ought to have in atten- 
dance an Indian Medicine Man. 

We think the world is progressing in en- 
lightenment; I suppose it is — inch by inch. 

[256] 



LIFE-PR O LONGING ART 

But it is not easy to name an age that has 
cherished more dekisions than ours, or been 
more superstitious, or more credulous, more 
eager to run after quackery. Especially is 
this true in regard to remedies for diseases, 
and the faith in healers and quacks outside 
of the regular, educated professors of the 
medical art. Is this an exaggeration ? Con- 
sider the quantity of proprietary medicines 
taken in this country, some of them harm- 
less, some of them good in some cases, some 
of them injurious, but generally taken with- 
out advice and in absolute ignorance of the 
nature of the disease or the specific action of 
the remedy. The drug-shops are full of 
them, especially in country towns ; and in 
the far west and on the Pacific coast I have 
been astonished at the quantity and variety 
displayed. They are found in almost every 
house ; the country is literally dosed to death 
with these manufactured nostrums and pana- 
ceas — and that is the most popular medi- 
cine which can be used for the greatest 
number of internal and external diseases 
and injuries. Many newspapers are half sup- 
^7 [257] 



THE LIFE-'SAVING AND 

ported by advertising them, and millions and 
millions of dollars are invested in this popu- 
lar industry. Needless to say that the pa- 
tented remedies most in request are those 
that profess a secret and unscientific origin. 
Those most " purely vegetable " seem most 
suitable to the wooden-heads who believe in 
them, but if one were sufficiently advertised 
as not containing a single trace of vegetable 
matter, avoiding thus all possible conflict of 
one organic life with another organic life, it 
would be just as popular. The favourites 
are those that have been secretly used by an 
East Indian fakir, or accidentally discovered 
as the natural remedy, dug out of the ground 
by an American Indian tribe, or steeped in a 
kettle by an ancient coloured person in a 
southern plantation, or washed ashore on the 
person of a sailor from the South Seas, or in- 
vented by a very aged man in New Jersey, who 
could not read, but had spent his life roaming 
in the woods, and whose capacity for discover- 
ing a '* universal panacea,'* besides his igno- 
rance and isolation, lay in the fact that his 
sands of life had nearly run. It is the sup- 

[ 258 ] 



LIFE-PR LONGING ART 

posed secrecy or low origin of the remedy 
that is its attraction. The basis of the vast 
proprietary medicine business is popular 
ignorance and credulity. And it needs to 
be pretty broad to support a traffic of such 
enormous proportions. 

During this generation certain branches 
of the life-saving and life-prolonging art 
have made great advances out of empiri- 
cism onto the solid ground of scientific 
knowledge. Of course I refer to surgery, 
and to the discovery of the causes and im- 
provement in the treatment of contagious 
and epidemic diseases. The general practice 
has shared in this scientific advance, but it is 
limited and always will be limited within ex- 
perimental bounds, by the infinite variations 
in individual constitutions, and the almost 
incalculable element of the interference of 
mental with physical conditions. When we 
get an exact science of man, we may expect 
an exact science of medicine. How far we 
are from this, we see when we attempt to 
make criminal anthropology the basis of 
criminal legislation. Man is so complex 

[ 259 ] 



THE LIFE-SAVING AND 

that if we were to eliminate one of his ap- 
parently worse qualities, we might develop 
others still worse, or throw the whole ma- 
chine into inefficiency. By taking away 
what the phrenologists call combativeness, 
we could doubtless stop prize-fights, but we 
might have a springless society. The only 
safe way is that taught by horticulture, to 
feed a fruit-tree generously, so that it has 
vigour enough to throw off its degenerate 
tendencies and its enemies, or, as the doctors 
say in medical practice, bring up the general 
system. That is to say, there is more hope 
for humanity in stimulating the good, than 
in directly suppressing the evil. It is on 
something like this line that the greatest ad- 
vance has been made in medical practice ; I 
mean in the direction of prevention. This 
involves of course the exclusion of the evil, 
that is, of suppressing the causes that pro- 
duce disease, as well as in cultivating the re- 
sistant power of the human system. In san- 
itation, diet, and exercise are the great fields 
of medical enterprise and advance. I need 

not say that the physician who, in the case of 

[260] 



LIFE-PROLONGING ART 

those under his charge, or who may possibly 
require his aid, contents himself with waiting 
for developed disease, is like the soldier in 
a besieged city, who opens the gates and 
then attempts to repel the Invader who has 
effected a lodgment. I hope the time will 
come when the chief practice of the physi- 
cian will be, first, in oversight of the sanitary 
condition of his neighbourhood, and, next, in 
preventive attendance on people who think 
they are well, and are all unconscious of the 
Insidious approach of some concealed malady. 
Another great change in modern practice 
is specialisation. Perhaps it has not yet 
reached the delicate particularity of the 
practice in ancient Egypt, where every mi- 
nute part of the human economy had its exclu- 
sive doctor. This Is Inevitable in a scientific 
age, and the result has been on the whole an 
advance of knowledge, and Improved treat- 
ment of specific ailments. The danger Is 
apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, 
who has only one hobby and traces every hu- 
man ill to strong liquor or tobacco, or the cor- 
set, or taxation of personal property, or denial 

[261] 



THE LIFE-SAVING AND 

of universal suffrage, or the eating of meat, 
or the want of the centralisation of nearly 
all initiative and interest and property in the 
state. The tendency of the accomplished 
specialist in medicine is to refer all physical 
trouble to the ill conduct of the organ he 
presides over. He can often trace every 
disease to want of width in the nostrils, to a 
defective eye, to a sensitive throat, to shut- 
up pores, to an irritated stomach, to an auric- 
ular defect. I suppose he is generally right, 
but I have a perhaps natural fear that if I 
happened to consult an amputationist about 
catarrh he would want to cut off my leg. I 
confess to an affection for the old-fashioned, 
all-round country doctor, who took a general 
view of his patient, knew his family, his con- 
stitution, all the gossip about his mental or 
business troubles, his affairs of the heart, 
disappointments in love, incompatibilities of 
temper, and treated the patient, as the phrase 
is, for all he was worth, and gave him visible 
medicine out of good old saddle-bags — how 
much faith we used to have in those saddle- 
bags — and not a prescription in a dead Ian- 

[262] 



LIFE-PR O LONGING ART 

guage to be put up by a dead-head clerk who 
occasionally mistakes arsenic for carbonate 
of soda. I do not mean, however, to say 
there is no sense in the retention of the 
hieroglyphics which the doctors use to com- 
municate their ideas to a druggist, for I had 
a prescription made in Hartford put up in 
Naples, and that could not have happened if 
it had been written in English. And I am 
not sure but the mysterious symbols have 
some effect on the patient. 

The mention of the intimate knowledge of 
family and constitutional conditions possessed 
by the old-fashioned country doctor, whose 
main strength lay in this and in his common- 
sense, reminds me of another great advance 
in the modern practice, in the attempt to 
understand nature better by the scientific 
study of psychology and the occult relations 
of mind and body. It is in the study of 
temper, temperament, hereditary predisposi- 
tions, that we may expect the most brilliant 
results in preventive medicine. 

As a layman, I cannot but notice another 
great advance in the medical profession. It 



THE LIFE-SAVING AND 

is not alone in it. It is rather expected that 
the lawyers will divide the oyster between 
them and leave the shell to the contestants. 
I suppose that doctors, almost without ex- 
ception, give more of their time and skill in 
the way of charity than almost any other 
profession. But somebody must pay, and 
fees have increased with the general cost of 
living and dying. If fees continue to in- 
crease as they have done in the past ten 
years in the great cities, like New York, 
nobody not a millionaire can afford to be 
sick. The fees will soon be a prohibitive 
tax. I cannot say that this will be altogether 
an evil, for the cost of calling medical aid 
may force people to take better care of them- 
selves. Still, the excessive charges are rather 
hard on people in moderate circumstances 
who are compelled to seek surgical aid. 
And here we touch one of the regrettable 
symptoms of the times, which is not by any 
means most conspicuous in the medical pro- 
fession. I mean the tendency to subordinate 
the old notion of professional duty to the 

greed for money. The lawyers are almost 

[264] 



LIFE-PR O LO NGING ART 

universally accused of it ; even the clergymen 
are often suspected of being influenced by it. 
The young man is apt to choose a profession 
on calculation of its profit. It will be a bad 
day for science and for the progress of the 
usefulness of the medical profession, when 
the love of money in its practice becomes 
stronger than professional enthusiasm, than 
the noble ambition of distinction for advan- 
cing the science, and the devotion to human 
welfare. 

I do not prophesy it. Rather I expect in- 
terest in humanity, love of science for itself, 
sympathy with suffering, self-sacrifice for 
others, to increase in the world, and be 
stronger in the end, than sordid love of gain 
and the low ambition of rivalry in material- 
istic display. To this higher life the physi- 
cian is called. I often wonder that there are 
so many men, brilliant men, able men, with 
so many talents for success in any calling, 
willing to devote their lives to a profession 
which demands so much self-sacrifice, so 
much hardship, so much contact with suffer- 
ing, subject to the call of all the world at 

[265] 



THE LIFE-SAVING ART 

any hour of the day or night, involving so 
much personal risk, carrying so much heart- 
breaking responsibility, responded to by so 
much constant heroism, a heroism requiring 
the risk of life in a service the only glory of 
which is a good name and the approval of 
one's conscience. 

To the members of such a profession, in 
spite of their human infirmities and limita- 
tions and unworthy hangers-on, I bow with 
admiration and the respect which we feel for 
that which is best in this world. 



[266] 



Literary Copyright 



TT 



HIS is the first public meeting of 
I the National Institute of Arts and 
Letters. The original members were 
selected by an invitation from the Ameri- 
can Social Science Association, which acted 
under the power of its charter from the Con- 
gress of the United States. The members 
thus selected, who joined the Social Science 
Association, were given the alternative of 
organising as an independent institute or as 
a branch of the Social Science Association. 

At the annual mcetinor of the Social 
Science Association on September 4, 1899, 
at Saratoga Springs, the members of the 
Institute voted to organise Independently. 
They formally adopted the revised consti- 
tution, which had been agreed upon at the 
first meeting, in New York in the preceding 
January, and elected officers as prescribed by 

the constitution. 

[267] 



LIT ER ART C P TRIGHT 

The object is declared to be the advance- 
ment of art and literature, and the qualifica- 
tion shall be notable achievement in art or 
letters. The number of active members will 
probably be ultimately fixed at one hundred. 
The society may elect honorary and associate 
members without limit. By the terms of 
agreement between the American Social 
Science Association and the National In- 
stitute, the members of each are ipso facto 
associate members of the other. 

It is believed that the advancement of art 
and literature in this country will be pro- 
moted by the organisation of the producers 
of literature and art. This is in strict anal- 
ogy with the action of other professions 
and of almost all the industries. No one 
doubts that literature and art are or should 
be leading interests in our civilisation, and 
their dignity will be enhanced in the public 
estimation by a visible organisation of their 
representatives, who are seriously determined 
upon raising the standards by which the 
work of writers and artists is judged. The 

association of persons having this common 

[268] 



LIT ERA RT COPTRIGHT 

aim cannot but stimulate effort, soften un- 
worthy rivalry into generous competition, 
and promote enthusiasm and good fellow- 
ship in their work. The mere coming to- 
gether to compare views and discuss interests 
and tendencies and problems which concern 
both the workers and the great public, can- 
not fail to be of benefit to both. 

In no other way so well as by association 
of this sort can be created the feeling of 
solidarity in our literature, and the recogni- 
tion of its power. It is not expected to 
raise any standard of perfection, or in any 
way to hamper individual development, but 
a body of concentrated opinion may raise 
the standard by promoting healthful and 
helpful criticism, by discouraging mediocrity 
and meretricious smartness, by keeping alive 
the traditions of good literature, while it is 
hospitable to all discoverers of new worlds. 
A safe motto for any such society would 
be Tradition and Freedom — Traditio et 
Libertas, 

It is generally conceded that what litera- 
ture in America needs at this moment is 

[269] 



LIT ER ART COPTRIGHT 

honest, competent, sound criticism. This 
is not likely to be attained by sporadic ef- 
forts, especially in a democracy of letters 
where the critics are not always superior 
to the criticised, where the man in front 
of the book is not always a better marks- 
man than the man behind the book. It 
may not be attained even by an organisa- 
tion of men united upon certain standards 
of excellence. I do not like to use the word 
authority, but it is not unreasonable to sup- 
pose that the public will be influenced by 
a body devoted to the advancement of art 
and literature, whose sincerity and discern- 
ment it has learned to respect, and admission 
into whose ranks will, I hope, be considered 
a distinction to be sought for by good work. 
The fashion of the day is rarely the judg- 
ment of posterity. You will recall what 
Byron wrote to Coleridge : " I trust you 
do not permit yourself to be depressed by 
the temporary partiality of what is called 
* the public ' for the favourites of the moment ; 
all experience is against the permanency of 

such impressions. You must have lived to 

[270] 



LIT ERA RT C O F TRIG HT 

see many of these pass away, and will sur- 
vive many more." '^ 

The chief concern of the National Insti- 
tute is with the production of works of art 
and of literature, and with their distribution. 
In the remarks following I shall confine my- 
self to the production and distribution of 
literature. In the limits of this brief address 
I can only in outline speak of certain tenden- 
cies and practices which are affecting this 
production and this distribution. The in- 
terests involved are, first, those of the author ; 
second, those of the publisher ; third, those 
of the public. As to all good literature, 
the interests of these three are identical if the 
relations of the three are on the proper basis. 
For the author, a good book is of more 
pecuniary value than a poor one, setting 
aside the question of fame ; to the publisher, 
the right of publishing a good book is solid 
capital, — an established house, in the long 
run, makes more money on " Standards " 
than on " Catch-pennies ; " and to the public 
the possession of the best literature is the 
breath of life, as that of the bad and mediocre 

[ 271 ] 



LITERARY C O P TRIGHT 

is moral and intellectual decadence. But in 
practice the interests of the three do not har- 
monise. The author, even supposing his 
efforts are stimulated by the highest aspira- 
tion for excellence and not by any commercial 
instinct, is compelled by his circumstances to 
get the best price for his production ; the 
publisher wishes to get the utmost return 
for his capital and his energy ; and the 
public wants the best going for the least 
money. 

Consider first the author, and I mean the 
author, and not the mere craftsman who 
manufactures books for a recognised market. 
His sole capital is his talent. His brain may 
be likened to a mine, gold, silver, copper, 
iron, or tin, which looks like silver when 
new. Whatever it is, the vein of valuable 
ore is limited, in most cases it is slight. 
When it is worked out the man is at the end 
of his resources. Has he expended or pro- 
duced capital ? I say he has produced it, 
and contributed to the wealth of the world, 
and that he is as truly entitled to the usufruct 

of it as the miner who takes gold or silver 

[272] 



LIT ER ART C O PT RIGHT 

out of the earth. For liow lono? I will 

O 

speak of that later on. The copyright of a 
book is not analogous to the patent right of 
an invention, which may become of universal 
necessity to the world. Nor should the 
o^reater share of this usufruct be absorbed 
by the manufacturer and publisher of the 
book. The publisher has a clear right to 
guard himself against risks, as he has the 
rio^ht of refusal to assume them. But there 
is an injustice somewhere, when for many a 
book, valued and even profitable to some- 
body, the author does not receive the price 
of a labourer's day wages for the time spent 
on it — to say nothing of the long years of 
its gestation. 

The relation between author and publisher 
ought to be neither complicated nor peculiar. 
The author may sell his product outright, or 
he may sell himself by an agreement similar 
to that which an employee in a manufactur- 
ing establishment makes with his master to 
give to the establishment all his inventions. 
Either of these methods is fair and business- 
like, though it may not be wise. A method 
i8 [273] 



LIT ER ART C FT RIGHT 

that prevailed in the early years of this cen- 
tury was both fair and wise. The author 
agreed that the publisher should have the 
exclusive right to publish his book for a 
certain term, or to make and sell a certain 
number of copies. When those conditions 
were fulfilled, the control of the property re- 
verted to the author. The continuance of 
these relations between the two depended, 
as it should depend, upon mutual advantage 
and mutual good-will. 

By the present common method the author 
makes over the use of his property to the will 
of the publisher. It is true that he parts 
with the use only of the property and not 
with the property itself, and the publisher in 
law acquires no other title, nor does he ac- 
quire any sort of interest in the future pro- 
ducts of the author s brain. But the author 
loses all control of his property, and its profit 
to him may depend upon his continuing to 
make over his books to the same publisher. 
In this continuance he is liable to the temp- 
tation to work for a market, instead of follow- 
ing the free impulses of his own genius. As 

[ 274 ] 



LIT ERA RT C O P T RIG HT 

to any special book the publisher is the sole 
judge whether to push it or to let it sink 
into the stasfnation of unadvertised oroods. 

The situation is full of complications. 
Theoretically it is the interest of both parties 
to sell as many books as possible. But the 
author has an interest in one book, the pub- 
lisher in a hundred. And it is natural and 
reasonable that the man who risks his money 
should be the judge of the policy best for his 
whole establishment. I cannot but think 
that this situation would be on a juster 
footing all round if the author returned to 
the old practice of limiting the use of his 
property by the publisher. I say this in full 
recognition of the fact that the publishers 
might be unwilling to make temporary in- 
vestments, or to take risks. What then ? 
Fewer books might be published. Less 
vanity might be gratified. Less money 
might be risked in experiments upon the 
public, and more might be made by distrib- 
uting good literature. Would the public 
be injured? It is an idea already discredited 
that the world owes a living to everybody 

[275 ] 



LIT ER ART COPTRIGHT 

who thinks he can write, and it is a super- 
stition already fading that capital which 
exploits literature as a trade acquires any 
special privileges. 

The present international copyright, which 
primarily concerns itself with the manu- 
facture of books, rests upon an unintelligible 
protective tariff basis. It should rest pri- 
marily upon an acknowledgment of the 
author's right of property in his own work, 
the same universal right that he has in any 
other personal property. The author's in- 
ternational copyright should be no more 
hampered by restrictions and encumbrances 
than his national copyright. Whatever regu- 
lations the government may make for the 
protection of manufactures, or trade indus- 
tries, or for purposes of revenue on importa- 
tions, they should not be confounded with 
the author's right of property. They have 
no business in an international copyright act, 
agreement, or treaty. The United States 
copyright for native authors contains no 
manufacturing restrictions. All we ask is 

that foreign authors shall enjoy the same 

[276] 



LIT ER ART COPT RIGHT 

privileges we have under our law, and that 
foreign nations shall give our authors the 
privileges of their local cop3Tight laws. I 
do not know any American author of any- 
standing who has ever asked or desired pro- 
tection ao:ainst foreiorn authors. 

This subject is so important that I may 
be permitted to enlarge upon it, in order to 
make clear suggestions already made, and 
to array again arguments more or less fa- 
miliar. I do this in the view of bring- 
ing before the institute work worthy of its 
best efforts, which if successful will entitle 
this body to the gratitude and respect of 
the country. I refer to the speedy revi- 
sion of our confused and w^holly inadequate 
American copyright laws, and later on to 
a readjustment of our international rela- 
tions. 

In the first place let me bring to your 
attention what is, to the vast body of authors, 
a subject of vital interest, which it is not too 
much to say has never received that treat- 
ment from authors themselves which its im- 
portance demands. I refer to the property 

[ 277 ] 



LIT ER ART C O PTRIGHT 

of authors in their productions. In this 
brief space and time I cannot enter fully 
upon this great subject, but must be con- 
tent to offer certain suggestions for your 
consideration. 

The property of an author in the product 
of his mental labour ought to be as absolute 
and unlimited as his property in the product 
of his physical labour. It seems to me idle 
to say that the two kinds of labour products 
are so dissimilar that the ownership cannot 
be protected by like laws. In this age of 
enlightenment such a proposition is absurd. 
The history of copyright law seems to show 
that the treatment of property in brain pro- 
duct has been based on this erroneous idea. 
To steal the paper on which an author has 
put his brain work into visible, tangible form 
is in all lands a crime, larceny, but to steal 
the brain work is not a crime. The utmost 
extent to which our enlightened American 
legislators, at almost the end of the nine- 
teenth century, have gone in protecting pro- 
ducts of the brain has been to give the 

author power to sue in civil courts, at large 

[ 278 ] 



LIT ERA RT C O P T RIGHT 

expense, the offender who has taken and 
sold his property. 

And what gross absurdity is the copyright 
law which limits even this poor defence of 
authors' property to a brief term of years, 
after the expiration of which he or his chil- 
dren and heirs have no defence, no recognised 
property whatever in his products. And for 
some inexplicable reason this term of years 
in which he may be said to own his property 
is divided into two terms, so that at the end 
of the first he is compelled to re-assert his 
ownership by renewing his copyright, or he 
must lose all ownership at the end of the 
short term. 

It is manifest to all honest minds that if an 
author is entitled to own his work for a term 
of years, it is equally the duty of his govern- 
ment to make that ownership perpetual. 
He can own and protect and leave to his 
children and his children's children by w^ill, 
the manuscript paper on which he has writ- 
ten, and he should have equal right to leave 
to them that mental product which consti- 
tutes the true money value of his labour. It 

[279 ] 



LITER A RT C P TRIGHT 

is unnecessary to say that the mental product 
is always as easy to be identified as the 
physical product. Its identification is abso- 
lutely certain to the intelligence of judges 
and juries. And it is apparent that the in- 
terests of assignees, who are commonly pub- 
lishers, are equal with those of authors, in 
making absolute and perpetual this property 
in which both are dealers. 

Another consideration follows here. Why 
should the ownership of a bushel of wheat, 
a piece of silk goods, a watch, or a handker- 
chief in the possession of an American car- 
ried or sent to England, or brought thence to 
this country, be absolute and unlimited, while 
the ownership of his own products as an 
author or as a purchaser from an author is 
made dependent on his nationality .^^ Why 
should the property of the manufacturer of 
cloths, carpets, satins, and any and every 
description of goods, be able to send his 
products all over the world, subject only to 
the tariff laws of various countries, while the 
author (alone of all known producers) is for- 
bidden to do so ? The existing law of our 

[280] 



LIT ERA RT COPTRIGHT 

country says to the foreign author, " You can 
have property in your book only if you man- 
ufacture it into saleable form in this country." 
What would be said of the wisdom or wild 
folly of a law which sought to protect other 
American industries by forbidding the impor- 
tation of all foreign manufactures ? 

No question of tariff protection is here 
involved. What duty shall be imposed upon 
foreign products or foreign manufactures is 
a question of political economy. The wrong 
against which authors should protest is in 
annexing to their terms of ownership of their 
property a protective tariff provision. For, 
be it observed, this is a subject of abstract 
justice, moral right, and it matters nothing 
wdiether the author be American, English, 
German, French, Hindoo, or Chinese, — and 
it is very certain that when America shall 
enact a simple, just, copyright law, giving to 
every human being the same protection of 
law to his property in his mental products 
as in the work of his hands, every civilised 
nation on earth will follow the noble example. 

As it now stands, authors who annually 

[281] 



LIT ER ART C O P T RIG HT 

produce the raw material for manufacturing 
purposes to an amount in value of millions, 
supporting vast populations of people, 
authors whose mental produce rivals and ex- 
ceeds in commercial value many of the great 
staple products of our fields, are the only 
producers who have no distinct property in 
their products, who are not protected in 
holding on to the feeble tenure the law gives 
them, and whose quasi-property in their 
works, flimsy as it is, is limited to a few 
years, and cannot with certainty be handed 
down to their children. 

It will be saidj it is said, that it is impos- 
sible for the author to obtain an acknowl- 
edgment of absolute right of property in his 
brain work. In our civilisation we have not 
yet arrived at this state of justice. It may 
be so. Indeed some authors have declared 
that this justice would be against public 
policy. I trust they are sustained by the 
lofty thought that in this view they are rising 
above the petty realm of literature into the 
broad field of statesmanship. 

But I think there will be a general agree- 

[282] 



Lir ERART C P TRIG HT 

ment that in the needed revlsal of our local 
copyright law we can attain some measure 
of justice. Some of the most obvious hard- 
ships can be removed. There is no reason 
why an author should pay for the privilege 
of a long life by the loss of his copyrights, 
and that his old age should be embittered 
by poverty because he cannot have the re- 
sults of the labour of his vigorous years. 
There is no reason why if he dies young he 
should leave those dependent on him with- 
out support, for the public has really no 
more right to appropriate his book than it 
would have to take his house from his 
widow and children. His income at best is 
small after he has divided with the publishers. 

No, there can certainly be no valid argu- 
ment against extending the copyright of the 
author to his own lifetime, with the addition 
of forty or fifty years for the benefit of his 
heirs. 

I will not leave this portion of the topic 
without saying that a perfectly harmonious 
relation between authors and publishers is 
most earnestly to be desired, nor without the 



LITER ART C PTRIGHT 

frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradi- 
tion and in the present experience, many of 
the most noble friendships and the most 
generous and helpful relations have sub- 
sisted, as they ought always to subsist, be- 
tween the producers and the distributors of 
literature, especially when the publisher has 
a love for literature, and the author is a 
reasonable being and takes pains to inform 
himself about the publishing business. 

One aspect of the publishing business 
which has become increasingly prominent 
during the last fifteen years cannot be over- 
looked, for it is certain to affect seriously 
the production of literature as to quality, 
and its distribution. Capital has discovered 
that literature is a product out of which 
money can be made, in the same way that 
it can be made in cotton, wheat, or iron. 
Never before in history has so much money 
been invested in publishing, with the single 
purpose of creating and supplying the mar- 
ket with manufactured goods. Never before 
has there been such an appeal to the reading 
public, or such a study of its tastes, or sup- 

[ 284 ] 



LIT ERA RT COPT RIGHT 

posed tastes, wants, likes and dislikes, coupled 
also with the same shrewd anxiety to ascer- 
tain a future demand that governs the pur- 
veyors of spring and fall styles in millinery 
and dressmaking. Not only the contents of 
the books and periodicals, but the covers, 
must be made to catch the fleeting fancy. 
Will the public next season wear its hose 
dotted or striped? 

Another branch of this activity is the so- 
called syndicating of the author's products 
in the control of one salesman, in which 
good work and inferior work are coupled 
together at a common selling price and in 
common notoriety. This insures a wider 
distribution, but what is its effect upon the 
quality of literature ? Is it your observation 
that the writer for a syndicate, on solicitation 
for a price or an order for a certain kind of 
work, produces as good quality as when he 
works independently, uninfluenced by the 
spirit of commercialism ? The question is 
a serious one for the future of literature. 

The consolidation of capital in great pub- 
lishing establishments has its advantages 

[285] 



LIT ER ART C O P TRIG HT 

and its disadvantages. It increases vastly 
the yearly output of books. The presses 
must be kept running, printers, paper-makers, 
and machinists are interested in this. The 
maw of the press must be fed. The capital 
must earn its money. One advantage of 
this is that when new and usable material 
is not forthcoming, the " standards " and the 
best literature must be reproduced in count- 
less editions, and the best literature is broad- 
cast over the world at prices to suit all 
purses, even the leanest. The disadvantage 
is that products, in the eagerness of competi- 
tion for a market, are accepted which are of 
a character to harm and not help the de- 
velopment of the contemporary mind in 
moral and intellectual strength. The public 
expresses its fear of this in the phrase it has 
invented — "the spawn of the press." The 
author who writes simply to supply this 
press, and in constant view of a market, is 
certain to deteriorate in his quality, nay 
more, as a beginner he is satisfied if he 
can produce something that will sell with- 
out regard to its quality. 

[286 J 



LIT ERud RT COPT RIGHT 

Is it extravagant to speak of a tendency 
to make the author merely an adjunct of the 
publishing house? Take as an illustration 
the publications in books and magazines 
relating to the late Spanish-American war. 
How many of them were ordered to meet a 
supposed market, and how many of them 
were the spontaneous and natural produc- 
tions of writers who had something to say? 
I am not quarrelling, you see, with the news- 
papers who do this sort of thing ; I am 
speaking of the tendency of what we have 
been accustomed to call literature to take 
on the transient and hasty character of the 
newspaper. 

In another respect, in method if not in 
quality, this literature approaches the news- 
paper. It is the habit of some publishing 
houses, not of all, let me distinctly say, to 
seek ahvays notoriety, not to nurse and keep 
before the public mind the best that has 
been evolved from time to time, but to offer 
always something new. The year's flooring 
is threshed off and the floor swept to make 

room for a fresh batch. Effort eventually 

[287] 



LIT ER ART C O P TRIGHT 

ceases for the old and approved, and is con- 
centrated on experiments. This is Hke the 
conduct of a newspaper. It is assumed that 
the public must be startled all the time. 

I speak of this freely because I think it as 
bad policy for the publisher as it is harmful 
to the public of readers. The same effort 
used to introduce a novelty will be much 
better remunerated by pushing the sale of an 
acknowledged good piece of literature. Lit- 
erature depends, like every other product 
bought by the people, upon advertising, and 
it needs much effort usually to arrest the 
attention of our hurrying public upon what 
it would most enjoy if it were brought to 
its knowledge. 

It would not be easy to fix the limit in 
this vast country to the circulation of a good 
book if it were properly kept before the 
public. Day by day, year by year, new 
readers are coming forward with curiosity 
and intellectual wants. The generation that 
now is should not be deprived of the best in 
the last generation. Nay more, one publica- 
tion, in any form, reaches only a compara- 

[ 288] 



LIT ER ART C O P TRIGHT 

tively small portion of the public that would 
be interested in it. A novel, for instance, 
may have a large circulation in a magazine; 
it may then appear in a book; it may reach 
other readers serially again in the columns 
of a newspaper; it may be offered again in 
all the by-ways by subscription, and yet not 
nearly exhaust its legitimate running power. 
This is not a supposition but a fact proved 
by trial. Nor is it to be wondered at, when 
we consider that we have an unequalled 
homogeneous population with a similar com- 
mon-school education. In looking over 
publisher's lists I am constantly coming 
across good books out of print, which are 
practically unknown to this generation, and 
yet are more profitable, truer to life and char- 
acter, more entertaining and amusing, than 
most of those fresh from the press month 
by month. 

Of the effect upon the literary product of 
writing to order, in obedience to a merely 
commercial instinct, I need not enlarge to a 
company of authors, any more than to a 
company of artists I need to enlarge upon 

19 [ 289 ] 



LITER ART C O Pr RIGHT 

the effect of a like commercial instinct upon 
art. 

I am aware that the evolution of literature 
or art in any period, in relation to the lit- 
erature and art of the world, cannot be 
accurately judged by contemporaries and 
participants, nor can it be predicted. But I 
have great expectations of the product of 
both in this country, and I am sure that both 
will be affected by the conduct of persons 
now living. It is for this reason that I have 
spoken. 



[ 290 ] 



The Pursuit of Happiness 

PERHAPS the most curious and inter- 
esting phrase ever put into a public 
document is " the pursuit of happi- 
ness." It is declared to be an inalienable 
rieht. It cannot be sold. It cannot be 
given away. It is doubtful if it could be 
left by will. 

The right of every man to be six feet high, 
and of every woman to be five feet four, was 
regarded as self-evident, until women as- 
serted their undoubted right to be six feet 
high also, when some confusion was intro- 
duced into the interpretation of this rhetori- 
cal fragment of the eighteenth century. 

But the inalienable right to the pursuit of 
happiness has never been questioned since it 
was proclaimed as a new gospel for the New 
World. The American people accepted it 
with enthusiasm, as if it had been the dis- 
covery of a gold-prospector, and started out 

in the pursuit as if the devil were after them. 

[ 291 ] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

If the proclamation had been that happi- 
ness is a common right of the race, alienable 
or otherwise, that all men are or may be 
happy, history and tradition might have in- 
terfered to raise a doubt whether even the 
new form of government could so change 
the ethical condition. But the right to make 
a pursuit of happiness, given in a funda- 
mental bill of rights, had quite a different 
aspect. Men had been engaged in many 
pursuits, most of them disastrous, some of 
them highly commendable. A sect in Gali- 
lee had set up the pursuit of righteousness 
as the only or the highest object of man's 
immortal powers. The rewards of it, how- 
ever, were not always immediate. Here was 
a political sanction of a pursuit that every- 
body acknowledged to be of a good thing. 

Given a heartaching longing in every 
human being for happiness, here was high 
warrant for going in pursuit of it. And the 
curious effect of this mo^ cTordre was that 
the pursuit arrested the attention as the 
most essential, and the happiness was post- 
poned, almost invariably, to some future sea- 

[ 292 ] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 



son, when leisure or plethora, that is, 
relaxation or gorged desire, should induee 
that physical and moral glow which is com- 
monly accepted as happiness. This glow of 
well-being is sometimes called contentment, 
but contentment was not in the programme. 
If it came at all, it was only to come after 
strenuous pursuit, that being the inalienable 
right. 

People, to be sure, have different concep- 
tions of happiness, but whatever they are, it 
is the custom, almost universal, to postpone 
the thing itself. This of course is specially 
true in our American system, where we have 
a chartered right to the thing itself. Other 
nations who have no such right may take it 
out in occasional driblets, odd moments that 
come, no doubt, to men and races who have 
no privilege of voting, or to such favoured 
places as New York city, whose government 
is always the same, however they vote. 

We are all authorised to pursue happiness, 
and we do as a general thing make a pursuit 
of it. Instead of simply being happy in the 
condition where we are, getting the sweets 

[ 293 ] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

of life in human intercourse, hour by hour, 
as the bees take honey from every flower 
that opens in the summer air, finding hap- 
piness in the well-filled and orderly mind, in 
the sane and enlightened spirit, in the self 
that has become what the self should be, 
we say that to-morrow, next year, in ten or 
twenty or thirty years, when we have arrived 
at certain coveted possessions or situation, 
we will be happy. Some philosophers dig- 
nify this postponement with the name of 
hope. 

Sometimes wandering in a primeval for- 
est, in all the witchery of the woods, be- 
sought by the kindliest solicitations of 
nature, wild flowers in the trail, the call of 
the squirrel, the flutter of birds, the great 
world-music of the wind in the pine-tops, the 
flecks of sunlight on the brown carpet and 
on the rough bark of immemorial trees, I 
find myself unconsciously postponing my 
enjoyment until I shall reach a hoped-for 
open place of full sun and boundless 
prospect. 

The analogy cannot be pushed, for it is 

[ 294] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

the common experience that these open 
spots in life, where leisure and space and 
contentment await us, are usually grown up 
with thickets, fuller of obstacles, to say 
nothing of labours and duties and diiificulties, 
than any part of the weary path we have 
trod. 

Why add the pursuit of happiness to our 
other inalienable worries? Perhaps there is 
something^ wronor in ourselves when w^e hear 
the complaint so often that men are pursued 
by disaster instead of being pursued by hap- 
piness. 

We all believe in happiness as something 
desirable and attainable, and I take it that 
this is the underlying desire when we speak 
of the pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of learn- 
ing, the pursuit of power in ofifice or in in- 
fluence, that is, that we shall come into 
happiness when the objects last named are 
attained. No amount of failure seems to 
lessen this belief. It is matter of experience 
that wealth and learning and power are as 
likely to bring unhappiness as happiness, 
and yet this constant lesson of experience 

[ 295 ] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

makes not the least impression upon human 
conduct. I suppose that the reason of this 
unheeding of experience is that every person 
born into the world is the only one exactly 
of that kind that ever was or ever will be cre- 
ated, so that he thinks he may be exempt 
from the general rules. At any rate, he goefe 
at the pursuit of happiness in exactly the 
old way, as if it were an original undertak- 
ing. Perhaps the most melancholy spectacle 
offered to us in our short sojourn in this 
pilgrimage, where the roads are so dusty 
and the caravansaries so ill provided, is the 
credulity of this pursuit. Mind, I am not 
objecting to the pursuit of wealth, or of 
learning, or of power, — - they are all explain- 
able, if not justifiable, — but to the blindness 
that does not perceive their futility as a 
means of attaining the end sought, which is 
happiness, an end that can only be com- 
passed by the right adjustment of each soul 
to this and to any coming state of existence. 
For whether the great scholar who is stuffed 
with knowledge is happier than the great 

money-getter who is gorged with riches, or 

[296] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

the wily politician who is a Warwick in his 
realm, depends entirely upon what sort of a 
man this pursuit has made him. There is 
a kind of fallacy current nowadays that a 
very rich man, no matter by what unscrupu- 
lous means he has gathered an undue pro- 
portion of the world into his possession, can 
be happy if he can turn round and make a 
generous and lavish distribution of it for 
worthy purposes. If he has preserved a 
remnant of conscience, this distribution may 
give him much satisfaction, and justly in- 
crease his good opinion of his own deserts ; 
but the fallacy is in leaving out of account 
the sort of man he has become in this sort 
of pursuit. Has he escaped .that hardening 
of the nature, that drying up of the sweet 
springs of sympathy, which usually attend 
a long-continued selfish undertaking ? Has 
either he or the great politician or the great 
scholar cultivated the real sources of enjoy- 
ment ? 

The pursuit of happiness ! It is not 
strange that men call it an illusion. But I 
am well satisfied that it is not the thinsf it- 

o 

[297 ] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

self, but the pursuit, that is an illusion. In- 
stead of thinking of the pursuit, why not fix 
our thoughts upon the moments, the hours, 
perhaps the days, of this divine peace, this 
merriment of body and mind, that can be 
repeated and perhaps indefinitely extended 
by the simplest of all means, namely, a dis- 
position to make the best of whatever comes 
to us? Perhaps the Latin poet was right in 
saying that no man can count himself happy 
while in this life, that is, in a continuous 
state of happiness ; but as there is for the 
soul no time save the conscious moment 
called " now," it is quite possible to make 
that " now " a happy state of existence. The 
point I make is that we should not habitually 
postpone that season of happiness to the 
future. 

No one, I trust, wishes to cloud the 
dreams of youth, or to dispel by excess of 
light what are called the illusions of hope. 
But why should the boy be nurtured in the 
current notion that he is to be really happy 
only when he has finished school, when he 

has got a business or profession by which 

[298] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

money can be made, when he has come to 
manhood? The irirl also dreams that for her 

o 

happiness Hes ahead, in that springtime 
when she is crossing the line of womanhood, 
— all the poets make much of this, — when 
she is married and learns the supreme lesson 
how to rule by obeying. It is only when the 
girl and the boy look back upon the years of 
adolescence that they realise how happy 
they might have been then if they had only 
known they were happy, and did not need to 
go in pursuit of happiness. 

The pitiful part of this inalienable right 
to the pursuit of happiness is, however, that 
most men interpret it to mean the pursuit 
of wealth, and strive for that always, post- 
poning being happy until they get a fortune, 
and if they are lucky in that, find at the end 
that the happiness has somehow eluded them, 
that, in short, they have not cultivated that 
in themselves that alone can bring happi- 
ness. More than that, they have lost the 
power of the enjoyment of the essential 
pleasures of life. I think that the woman 
in the Scriptures who out of her poverty 

[ 299 ] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

put her mite into the contribution-box got 
more happiness out of that driblet of gen- 
erosity and self-sacrifice than some men in 
our day have experienced in founding a 
university. 

And how fares it with the intellectual 
man ? To be a selfish miser of learning, for 
self-gratification only, is no nobler in reality 
than to be a miser of money. And even 
when the scholar is lavish of his knowledge 
in helping an ignorant world, he may find 
that if he has made his studies as a pursuit 
of happiness he has missed his object. Much 
knowledge increases the possibility of enjoy- 
ment, but also the possibility of sorrow. If 
intellectual pursuits contribute to an en- 
lightened and altogether admirable charac- 
ter, then indeed has the student found the 
inner spring of happiness. Otherwise one 
cannot say that the wise man is happier 
than the ignorant man. 

In fine, and in spite of the political in- 
junction, we need to consider that happiness 
is an inner condition, not to be raced after. 
And what an advance in our situation it 

[ 300 ] 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

would be if wc could get it into our heads 
here in this land of inalienable rights that 
the world would turn round just the same 
if we stood still and waited for the daily 
coming of our Lord ! 



[301 ] 



Truth fulness 



TRUTHFULNESS is as essential 
in literature as it is in conduct, in 
fiction as it is in the report of an 
actual occurrence. Falsehood vitiates a 
poem, a painting, exactly as it does a life. 
Truthfulness is a quality like simplicity. 
Simplicity in literature is mainly a matter 
of clear vision and lucid expression, however 
complex the subject-matter may be ; exactly 
as in life, simplicity does not so much depend 
upon external conditions as upon the spirit 
in which one lives. It may be more difficult 
to maintain simplicity of living with a great 
fortune than in poverty, but simplicity of 
spirit — that is, superiority of soul to circum- 
stance — is possible in any condition. Un- 
fortunately the common expression that a 
certain person has wealth is not so true as 
it would be to say that wealth has him. The 
life of one with great possessions and corre- 

[ S'^S ] 



r R UTHFULNESS 

sponding responsibilities may be full of com- 
plexity; the subject of literary art may be 
exceedingly complex ; but we do not set 
complexity over against simplicity. For 
simplicity is a quality essential to true life 
as it is to literature of the first class ; it 
is opposed to parade, to artificiality, to 
obscurity. 

The quality of truthfulness is not so easily 
defined. It also is a matter of spirit and 
intuition. We have no difficulty in applying 
the rules of common morality to certain 
functions of writers for the public, for in- 
stance, the duties of the newspaper reporter, 
or the newspaper correspondent, or the 
narrator of any event in life the relation of 
which owes its value to its being absolutely 
true. The same may be said of hoaxes, 
literary or scientific, however clear they may 
be. The person indulging in them not only 
discredits his office in the eyes of the public, 
but he injures his own moral fibre, and he 
contracts such a habit of unveracity that he 
never can hope for genuine literary success. 
For there never was yet any genuine success 

[ 304 ] 



T R UTHFULNESS 

in letters without integrity. The clever hoax 
is no better than the trick of imitation, that 
is, conscious imitation of another, which has 
unveracity to one's self at the bottom of it. 
Burlesque is not the highest order of intel- 
lectual performance, but it is legitimate, and 
if cleverly done it may be both useful and 
amusing, but it is not to be confounded with 
forgery, that is, with a composition which 
the author attempts to pass off as the pro- 
duction of somebody else. The forgery may 
be amazingly smart, and be even popular, 
and get the author, when he is discovered, 
notoriety, but it is pretty certain that with 
his ingrained lack of integrity he will never 
accomplish any original work of value, and 
he will be always personally suspected. 
There is nothing so dangerous to a young 
writer as to begin with hoaxing ; or to be- 
gin with the invention, either as reporter or 
correspondent, of statements put forward 
as facts, which are untrue. This sort of 
facility and smartness may get a writer 
employment, unfortunately for him and the 
public, but there is no satisfaction in it to 
20 [ 305 ] 



T R UT H F U L N E S S 

one who desires an honourable career. It 
is easy to recall the names of brilliant men 
whose fine talents have been eaten away by 
this habit of unveracity. This habit is the 
greatest danger of the newspaper press of 
the United States. 

It is easy to define this sort of untruthful- 
ness, and to study the moral deterioration it 
works in personal character, and in the 
quality of literary work. It was illustrated 
in the forgeries of the marvellous boy Chat- 
terton. The talent he expended in deception 
might have made him an enviable reputation, 
— the deception vitiated whatever good there 
was in his work. Fraud in literature is no 
better than fraud in archeology, — Chatter- 
ton deserves no more credit than Shapiro 
who forged the Moabite pottery with its 
inscriptions. The reporter who invents an 
incident, or heightens the horror of a calam- 
ity by fiction is in the case of Shapiro. The 
habit of this sort of invention is certain to 
destroy the writer's quality, and if he at- 
tempts a legitimate work of the imagination, 

he will carry the same unveracity into that. 

[306] 



r R Ur H F U L NE s s 



The quality of truthfulness cannot be juggled 
with. Akin to this is the trick which has 
put under proper suspicion some very clever 
writers of our day, and cost them all public 
confidence in whatever they do, — the trick of 
posing for what they are not. We do not 
mean only that the reader does not believe 
their stories of personal adventure, and re- 
gards them personally as " frauds," but that 
this quality of deception vitiates all their 
work, as seen from a literary point of view. 
We mean that the writer who hoaxes the 
public, by inventions which he publishes as 
facts, or in regard to his own personality, 
not only will lose the confidence of the 
public but he will lose the power of doing 
genuine work, even in the field of fiction. 
Good work is always characterised by 
integrity. 

These illustrations help us to understand 
what is meant by literary integrity. For the 
deception in the case of the correspondent 
who invents " news " is of the same quality 
as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in a 
prose fiction ; there is a moral and probably 

[ 307 ] 



r R ur H F U L N E s s 

a mental defect in both. The story of Rob- 
inson Crusoe is a very good illustration of 
veracity in fiction. It is effective because it 
has the simple air of truth ; it is an illusion 
that satisfies ; it is possible ; it is good art : 
but it has no moral deception in it. In fact, 
looked at as literature, we can see that it is 
sincere and wholesome. 

What is this quality of truthfulness which 
we all recognise when it exists in fiction .r* 
There is much fiction, and some of it, for 
various reasons, that we like and find interest- 
ing which is nevertheless insincere if not 
artificial. We see that the writer has not 
been honest with himself or with us in his 
views of human life. There may be just as 
much lying in novels as anywhere else. The 
novelist who offers us what he declares to be 
a figment of his own brain may be just as 
untrue as the reporter who sets forth a fig- 
ment of his own brain which he declares to 
be a real occurrence. That is, just as much 
faithfulness to life is required of the novelist 
as of the reporter, and in a much higher 

degree. The novelist must not only tell the 

[ 308 ] 



r R UT H F U L NESS 



truth about life as he sees it, material and 
spiritual, but he must be faithful to his own 
conceptions. If fortunately he has genius 
enough to create a character that has reality 
to himself and to others, he must be faithful 
to that character. He must have conscience 
about it, and not misrepresent it, any more 
than he would misrepresent the sayings and 
doings of a person in real life. Of course if 
his own conception is not clear, he will be as 
unjust as in writing about a person in real 
life whose character he knew only by rumour. 
The novelist may be mistaken about his own 
creations and in his views of life, but if he 
have truthfulness in himself, sincerity will 
show in his work. 

Truthfulness is a quality that needs to be 
as strongly insisted on in literature as sim- 
plicity. But when we carry the matter a 
step further, we see that there cannot be truth- 
fulness about life without knowledge. The 
world is full of novels, and their number dailv 
increases, written without any sense of re- 
sponsibility, and with very little experience, 
which are full of false views of human nature 

[309 ] 



T R UT H F U L N E S S 

and of society. We can almost always tell 
in a fiction when the writer passes the boun- 
dary of his own experience and observation 
— he becomes unreal, which is another name 
for untruthful. And there is an absence of 
sincerity in such work. There seems to be 
a prevailing impression that any one can 
write a story. But it scarcely need be said 
that literature is an art, like painting and 
music, and that one may have knowledge of 
life and perfect sincerity, and yet be unable to 
produce a good, truthful piece of literature, 
or to compose a piece of music, or to paint a 
picture. 

Truthfulness is in no w^ay opposed to in- 
vention or to the exercise of the imagination. 
When we say that the writer needs experi- 
ence, we do not mean to intimate that his 
invention of character or plot should be liter- 
ally limited to a person he has known, or to 
an incident that has occurred, but that they 
should be true to his experience. The writer 
may create an ideally perfect character, or an 
ideally bad character, and he may try him by 
a set of circumstances and events never 

[310] 



r R U T H F U L N E S S 

before combined, and this creation may be 
so romantic as to go beyond the experience 
of any reader, that is to say, wholly imaginary 
(like a composed landscape which has no 
counterpart in any one view of a natural 
landscape), and yet it may be so consistent 
in itself, so true to an idea or an aspiration 
or a hope, that it will have the element of 
truthfulness and subserve a very high pur- 
pose. It may actually be truer to our sense 
of verity to life than an array of undeniable, 
naked facts set down without art and with- 
out imagination. 

The difificulty of telling the truth in litera- 
ture is about as great as it is in real life. We 
know how nearly impossible it is for one per- 
son to convey to another a correct impression 
of a third person. He may describe the fea- 
tures, the manner, mention certain traits and 
sayings, all literally true, but absolutely mis- 
leading as to the total impression. And this 
is the reason why extreme, unrelieved realism 
is apt to give a false impression of persons 
and scenes. One can hardly help having a 
whimsical notion occasionally, seeing the 

[311] 



r R UT H F U L N E S S 

miscarriages even in our own attempts at 
truthfulness, that it absolutely exists only in 
the imagination. 

In a piece of fiction, especially romantic 
fiction, an author is absolutely free to be 
truthful, and he will be if he has personal 
and literary integrity. He moves freely amid 
his own creations and conceptions, and is not 
subject to the peril of the writer who ad- 
mittedly uses facts, but uses them so clum- 
sily or with so little conscience, so out of 
their real relations, as to convey a false 
impression and an untrue view of life. This 
quality of truthfulness is equally evident in 
" The Three Guardsmen " and in " Mid- 
summer Night s Dream." Dumas is as con- 
scientious about his world of adventure as 
Shakespeare is in his semi-supernatural re- 
gion. If Shakespeare did not respect the 
laws of his imaginary country, and the crea- 
tures of his fancy, if Dumas were not true to 
the characters he conceived, and the achieve- 
ments possible to them, such works would 
fall into confusion. A recent story called 

" The Refugees " set out with a certain 

[312 ] 



T R U T H F U L N E S S 



promise of vemcity, although the reader 
understood of course that it was to be a 
purely romantic invention. But very soon 
the author recklessly violated his own concep- 
tion, and when he got his " real " characters 
upon an iceberg, the fantastic position became 
ludicrous without being funny, and the per- 
formances of the same characters in the 
wilderness of the New World showed such 
lack of knowledge in the writer that the story 
became an insult to the intelligence of the 
reader. Whereas such a romance as that of 
" The MS. Found in a Copper Cylinder," 
although it is humanly impossible and visibly 
a figment of the imagination, is satisfactory 
to the reader because the author is true to 
his conception, and it is interesting as a curi- 
ous allesforical and humorous illustration of 
the ruinous character in human affairs of 
extreme unselfishness. There is the same 
sort of truthfulness in Hawthorne's allegory 
of " The Celestial Railway," in Froude's " On 
a Siding at a Railway Station," and in Bun- 
yan's " Pilgrim's Progress." 

The habit of lying carried into fiction 

l^'^o ] 



r R U T H F U L N ES S 

vitiates the best work, and perhaps it is easier 
to avoid it in pure romance than in the so- 
called novels of " every-day life." And this 
is probably the reason why so many of 
the novels of " real life " are so much more 
offensively untruthful to us than the wildest 
romances. In the former the author could 
perhaps " prove " every incident he narrates, 
and produce living every character he has 
attempted to describe. But the effect is that 
of a lie, either because he is not a master of 
his art, or because he has no literary con- 
science. He is like an artist who is more 
anxious to produce a meretricious effect than 
he is to be true to himself or to nature. An 
author who creates a character assumes a 
great responsibility, and if he has not integ- 
rity or knowledge enough to respect his own 
creation, no one else will respect it, and, worse 
than this, he will tell a falsehood to hosts of 
undiscriminating readers. 



[314] 



Literature and the Stage 

Is the divorce of Literature and the Stage 
complete, or is it still only partial ? As 
the lawyers say, is it a vinculo, or only 
a mensa et thoro ? And if this divorce is 
permanent, is it a good thing for literature 
or the stage ? Is the present condition of 
the stage a degeneration, as some say, or is 
it a natural evolution of an art independent 
of literature ? 

How long is it since a play has been written 
and accepted and played which has in it any 
so-called literary quality or is an addition to 
literature? And what is dramatic art as at 
present understood and practised by the 
purveyors of plays for the public ? If any one 
can answer these questions, he will contribute 
something to the discussion about the ten- 
dency of the modern stage. 

Every one recognises in the "good old 
plays " which are occasionally " revived " 
both a quality and an intention different 

[315] 



LITERATURE AND THE STAGE 

from anything in most contemporary pro- 
ductions. They are real dramas, the interest 
of which depends upon sentiment, upon an 
exhibition of human nature, upon the inter- 
action of varied character, and upon plot, 
and we recognise in them a certain literary 
art. They can be read with pleasure. 
Scenery and mechanical contrivance may 
heighten the effects, but they are not ab- 
solute essentials. 

In the contemporary play instead of char- 
acter we have " characters," usually exagger- 
ations of some trait, so pushed forward as to 
become caricatures. Consistency to human 
nature is not insisted on in plot, but there 
must be startling and unexpected incidents, 
mechanical devices, and a great deal of what 
is called "business," which clearly has as 
much relation to literature as have the steps 
of 2, farceur in a clog-dance. The composi- 
tion of such plays demands literary ability 
in the least degree, but ingenuity in invent- 
ing situations and surprises; the text is 
nothing, the action is everything; but the 
text is considerably improved if it have 



LITERATU RE AND THE STAGE 

brightness of repdrLcc and a lixcly apprclicn- 
sion of contemporary events, including the 
slang of the hour. These plays appear to be 
made up by the writer, the manager, the 
carpenter, the costumer. If they are success- 
ful with the modern audiences, their success 
is probably due to other things than any 
literary quality they may have, or any truth 
to life or to human nature. 

We see how this is in the great number of 
plays adapted from popular novels. In the 
" dramatisation " of these stories, pretty much 
everything is left out of the higher sort that 
the reader has valued in the story. The 
romance of " Monte Cristo " is an illustra- 
tion of this. The play is vulgar melodrama, 
out of which has escaped altogether the re- 
finement and the romantic idealism of the 
stirring romance of Dumas. Now and then, 
to be sure, we get a different result, as in 
" Olivia," where all the pathos and character 
of the " Vicar of Wakefield " are preserved, 
and the effect of the play depends upon pas- 
sion and sentiment. But as a rule, we get only 
the more obvious saliencies, the bones of 

[317] 



LITERATURE AND THE STAGE 

the novel, fitted in or clothed with stage 
"business." 

Of course it is true that literary men, even 
dramatic authors, may write and always have 
written dramas not suited to actors, that could 
not well be put upon the stage. But it re- 
mains true that the greatest dramas, those 
that have endured from the Greek times 
down, have been (for the audiences of their 
times) both good-reading and good-acting 
plays. 

I am not competent to criticise the stage 

or its tendency. But I am interested in 

noticing the increasing non-literary character 

of modern plays. It may be explained as a 

necessary and justifiable evolution of the 

stage. The managers may know what the 

audience wants, just as the editors of some 

of the most sensational newspapers say that 

they make a newspaper to suit the public. 

The newspaper need not be well written, but 

it must startle with incident and surprise, 

found or invented. An observer must notice 

that the usual theatre-audience in New York 

or Boston to-day laughs at and applauds 

[3x8] 



LITERATURE AND THE STAGE 

costumes, situations, innuendoes, doubtful 
suggestions, that it would have blushed at 
a few years ago. Has the audience been 
creating a theatre to suit its taste, or have 
the manao-ers been cducatino- an audience? 
Has the divorce of literary art from the 
mimic art of the stage anything to do with 
this condition? 

The stage can be amusing, but can it show 
life as it is without the aid of idealising lit- 
erary art? And if the stage goes on in this 
materialistic way, how long will it be before 
it ceases to amuse intelligent, not to say in- 
tellectual people? 



[ 319 ] 



" H. H;' in Southern Cali- 
fornia 

IT seems somehow more nearly an irrep- 
arable loss to us than to " H. H." that 
she did not live to taste her very substan- 
tial fame in Southern California. We should 
have had such delight in her unaffected 
pleasure in it, and it would have been one 
of those satisfactions somewhat adequate 
to our sense of fitness that are so seldom 
experienced. It was my good fortune to 
see Mrs. Jackson frequently in the days in 
New York when she was writing " Ramona," 
which was begun and perhaps finished in 
the Berkeley House. The theme had com- 
plete possession of her, and chapter after 
chapter flowed from her pen as easily as 
one would write a letter to a friend ; and 
she had an ever fresh and vig-orous delig^ht 
in it. I have often thouo-ht that no one 

^21 [ 321 ] 



<'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

enjoyed the sensation of living more than 
Mrs. Jackson, or was more alive to all the 
influences of nature and the contact of 
mind with mind, more responsive to all 
that was exquisite and noble either in na- 
ture or in society, or more sensitive to the 
disagreeable. This is merely saying that 
she was a poet; but when she became in- 
terested in the Indians, and especially in 
the harsh fate of the Mission Indians in 
California, all her nature was fused for the 
time in a lofty enthusiasm of pity and in- 
dignation, and all her powers seemed to be 
consecrated to one purpose. Enthusiasm 
and sympathy will not make a novel, but 
all the same they are necessary to the pro- 
duction of a work that has in it real vital 
quality, and in this case all previous expe- 
rience and artistic training became the un- 
conscious servants of Mrs. Jackson's heart. 
I know she had very little conceit about 
her performance, but she had a simple 
consciousness that she was doing her best 
work, and that if the world should care 

much for anything she had done, after she 

[322 ] 



*' H. Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

was gone, it would be for " Ramona." She 
had put herseU into it. 

And vet I am certain that she could 
have liad no idea what the novel would be 
to the people of Southern California, or 
how it would identify her name with all 
that region, and make so many scenes in 
it places of pilgrimage and romantic inter- 
est for her sake. I do not mean to say 
that the people in California knew person- 
ally Ramona and Alessandro, or altogether 
believe in them, but that in their idealisa- 
tions they recognise a verity and the ulti- 
mate truth of human nature, while in the 
scenery, in the fading sentiment of the old 
Spanish life, and the romance and faith of 
the Missions, the author has done for the 
region very much what Scott did for the 
Highlands. I hope she knows now, I pre- 
sume she does, that more than one Indian 
school in the Territories is called the Ra- 
mona School ; that at least two villages in 
California are contending for the priority 
of using the name Ramona; that all the 
travellers and tourists (at least in the time 



''H,Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

they can spare from real-estate specula- 
tions) go about under her guidance, are 
pilgrims to the shrines she has described, 
and eager searchers for the scenes she has 
made famous in her novel ; that more than 
one city and more than one town claims 
the honour of connection with the story ; 
that the tourist has pointed out to him in 
more than one village the very house 
where Ramona lived, where she was mar- 
ried — indeed, that a little crop of legends 
has already grown up about the story it- 
self. I was myself shown the house in 
Los Angeles where the story was written, 
and so strong is the local impression that 
I confess to looking at the rose-embow- 
ered cottage with a good deal of interest, 
though I had seen the romance growing 
day by day in the Berkeley in New York. 
The undoubted scene of the loves of 
Ramona and Alessandro is the Comulos 
rancho, on the railway from Newhall to 
Santa Paula, the route that one takes now 
(unless he wants to have a life-long remem- 
brance of the ground swells of the Pacific in 

[324] 



^'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

an uneasy little steamer) to go from Los 
Angeles to Santa Barbara. It is almost the 
only one remaining of the old-fashioned 
Spanish haciendas, where the old adminis- 
tration prevails. The new railway passes it 
now, and the hospitable owners have been 
obliged to yield to the public curiosity and 
provide entertainment for a continual stream 
of visitors. The place is so perfectly de- 
scribed in " Ramona " that I do not need 
to draw it over again, and I violate no confi- 
dence and only certify to the extraordinary 
powers of delineation of the novelist, when I 
say that she only spent a few hours there, — 
not a quarter of the time we spent in iden- 
tifying her picture. We knew the situation be- 
fore the train stopped by the crosses erected 
on the conspicuous peaks of the serrated 
ashy — or shall I say purple — hills that en- 
fold the fertile valley. It is a great domain, 
watered by a swift river, and sheltered by 
wonderfully picturesque mountains. The 
house is strictly in the old Spanish style, 
of one story about a large court, with flowers 
and a fountain, in which are the most noisy 

[325 ] 



"H,Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

if not musical frogs in the world, and all the 
interior rooms opening upon a gallery. The 
real front is towards the garden, and here at 
the end of the gallery is the elevated room 
where Father Salvierderra slept when he 
passed a night at the hacienda, — a pretty 
room which has a case of Spanish books, 
mostly religious and legal, and some quaint 
and cheap holy pictures. We had a letter to 
Signora Del Valle, the mistress, and were 
welcomed with a sort of formal extension of 
hospitality that put us back into the courtly 
manners of a hundred years ago. The Sig- 
nora, who is in no sense the original of the 
mistress whom " H. H." describes, is a widow 
now for seven years, and is the vigilant ad- 
ministrator of all her large domain, of the 
stock, the grazing lands, the vineyard, the 
sheep ranch, and all the people. Rising 
very early in the morning, she visits every 
department, and no detail is too minute to 
escape her inspection, and no one in the 
great household but feels her authority. 
It was a very lovely day on the 17th of 

March (indeed, I suppose it had been pre- 

[ 326 ] 



''H,Hr IN CALIFORNIA 



ceded by 364 days cxac-tly like it) as we sat 
upon tlic gallery looking on the garden, a 
garden of oranges, roses, citrons, lemons, 
peaches — what fruit and flower was not 
growing there ? — acres and acres of vineyard 
beyond, with the tall cane and willows b\' the 
stream, and the purple mountains against 
the sapphire sky. Was there ever anything 
more exquisite than the peach-blossoms 
against that blue sky ! Such a place of 
peace. A soft south wind was blowing, and 
all the air was drowsy with the hum of bees. 
In the o-arden is a vine-covered arbour, with 
seats and tables, and at the end of it is 
the opening into a little chapel, a domestic 
chapel, carpeted like a parlour, and bearing 
all the emblems of a loving devotion. By 
the Q:arden orate hano^ three small bells, 
from some old mission, all cracked, but serv- 
ing (each has its office) to summon the work- 
men or to call to prayer. 

Perfect system reigns in Signora Del 
Valle's establishment, and even the least 
child in it has Its duty. At sundown a little 
slip of a girl went out to the gate and struck 

[ 327 ] 



^'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

one of the bells. "What is that for?" I 
asked as she returned. " It is the Angelus," 
she said simply. I do not know what would 
happen to her if she should neglect to strike 
it at the hour. At eight o'clock the largest 
bell was struck, and the Signora and all her 
household, including the house servants, went 
out to the little chapel in the garden, which 
was suddenly lighted with candles, gleaming 
brilliantly through the orange groves. The 
Signora read the service, the household re- 
sponding — a twenty minutes' service, which 
is as much a part of the administration of the 
establishment as visiting the granaries and 
presses, and the bringing home of the goats. 
The Signora's apartments, which she per- 
mitted us to see, were quite in the nature 
of an oratory, with shrines and sacred pic- 
tures and relics of the faith. By the shrine 
at the head of her bed hung the rosary car- 
ried by Father J unipero, — a priceless pos- 
session. From her presses and armoires, the 
Signora, seeing we had a taste for such 
things, brought out the feminine treasures 

of three generations, the silk and embroidered 

[328] 



''H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

dresses of last ccnliir\-, llu' iil)Osas, tlic jew- 
elry, the brillicint stultsof ChiiKi and Mexico, 
each article with a nicniorx- ami a ila\'OLir. 

But I must not ])e beti'a\-ed into writinor 
about Raniona's house. How charm ini;" in- 
deed it was the next nK)rnin<j;, — tlio' the 
birds in the garden were astir a little too 
earl)', — with the thermometer set to the 
exact decree of warmth without lanouor, the 
sky blue, the wind soft, the air scented wnth 
orange and jessamine. The Signora had al- 
ready visited all her premises before we were 
up. We had seen the evening before an en- 
closure near the house full of cashmere goats 
and kids, wdiose antics were sufTpiciently amus- 
ing — most of them had now gone afield; 
workmen were coming for their orders, 
ploughing was going on in the barley fields, 
traders were driving to the plantation store, 
the fierce eao-le in a bisf cao-e bv the olive 
press was raging at his detention. Within 
the house enclosure are an olive mill and 
press, a wine-press and a great storehouse 
of wine, containing now little but empty 
casks, — a dusky, interesting place, with pora- 

[329] 



^'H.Hr IN CALIFORNIA 

egranates and dried bunches of grapes and 
oranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging 
from the rafters. Near by is a corn-house 
and a small distillery, and the corrals for 
sheep shearing are not far off. The ranches 
for cattle and sheep are on the other side of 
the mountain. 

Peace be with Comulos. It must please 
the author of "Ramona" to know that it con- 
tinues in the old ways; and I trust she is 
undisturbed by the knowledge that the 
rage for change will not long let it be what 
it now is. 



i^Z'^l 



C\ (2 



iCOPlf DLL. lOCAT.iilV, 
APR. 26 1902 



'^^^ ^ 1902 






c:> 



